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AMERICA AT WAR 
PROFESSOR W. F. OSBORNE 



AMERICA 
AT WAR 



BY 

PROFESSOR W. F. OSBORNE 

UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA, 
WINNIPEG, CANADA 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



^^'^A 






COPYRIGHT, 1917, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPAMT 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

NOV -2 1917 ' 

©G!.A4 7G902'.V 



TO 

JOHN W. DAFOE, 

THE ABLE EDITOR OF THE MANITOBA FREE PRESS, WHOSE 

ADVOCACY OF CANADA'S FULL l^ARTICIPATION IN THE 

WORLD STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY HAS BEEN 

SO CONSISTENT AND SO POWERFUL, 

THIS RECORD OF A MEMORABLE 

MONTH IS INSCRIBED 



PREFACE 

Early in April, 1917, I was asked by tlie 
Manitoba Free Press to go to Washington as 
Special Correspondent to report upon the move- 
ment of the United States into the great world 
war. 

Never before had I witnessed so absorbing 
or so exhilarating a spectacle. Two features 
about the American situation affected me most 
strongly. One was the readiness and the ca- 
pacity of the American people for organized 
effort on a great scale. The other was the ex- 
tent to which Ideality is now the outstanding 
characteristic of the American Eepublic. One 
hundred million free citizens advancing into 
the most desolating of struggles with no thought 
or prospect of ulterior advantage is one of the 
most inspiring incidents in the history of the 
world. At the same time I cannot help record- 
ing my conviction that, as a by-product of the 
war, great national advantage will accrue to 
the United States as a result of its participa- 
tion. Upon the vast, conglomerate America 
that has grown up since the Civil War, the seal 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

of a unified Americanism will now finally be set. 
All classes, conditions, and races of America 
henceforth know that they can live and prosper 
under the Aonerican flag only on the condition 
of an unreserved devotion to the self-deter- 
mined purposes of the Nation. For the achiev- 
ing of this great result the immediate adoption 
of Selective Conscription will be largely to 
thank. I therefore heartily applaud the wisdom 
of that policy. 

Into the American atmosphere, thus created 
by the Declaration of a State of War against 
Germany, came the two great Missions, the 
French and the British. Never were National 
delegations more admirably timed, never were 
they more admirably constituted. To the work 
and character of these Missions I have paid 
somewhat large attention in the course of this 
Correspondence. The variety and the power 
of great personality were never better illus- 
trated than in the persons of Joffre, Viviani, 
and Balfour. The coming of Viviani and Joffre 
offered an opportunity for the expression of 
America's traditional and fully justified cordial- 
ity to France. The character and the deliver- 
ances of Balfour disclosed to the United States, 
as it had never been disclosed before, the splen- 
didly democratic spirit of modern Britain. 

The only consequence of this war that can be 



PREFACE ix 

an adequate compensation for tlie disastrous 
losses it has made necessary, will be '^a world 
made safe for Democracy," a world rationally 
and legally organised on the basis and for the 
purposes of Peace. The intervention of the 
United States makes it finally inevitable that 
this end shall be the end that will be preponder- 
atingly safeguarded in the negotiations that will 
ultimately terminate hostilities. 

In themselves, and so far as my part is con- 
cerned, the contents of this volume are not 
worthy of being put in book form. They are so 
published simply as a contemporary picture of 
a momentous event. A photograph may be 
negligible in itself and yet be useful, and even 
precious, as a more or less permanent record of 
an absorbing moment. 

The reading of the proofs has been made 
delightful by the comradeship and assistance 
of my friend, Salem Goldworth Bland. 

W. F. 0. 
Minaki, Ont. 

Aug. 25th, 1917. 



CONTENTS 



PAOE 

I The Campaign for the Making of Public Opin- 
ion 15 

n A Talk With A German- American 21 

III To Free the World of Brigandage £8 

IV Press AND Pulpit Fusing PtTBLic Opinion 34 

V War Feeling in Congress 40 

VI The British Ambassador. A Day in the Senate 46 

VII Some Public Men in Action 62 

Vin Americanism Now in the Saddle 68 

IX Public Opinion Stern Against Sedition 64 

X Senator Lodge: Compliments To Canada 70 

XI Red-hot Army Debate in the House of Rep- 
resentatives r. 76 

XII Balfour and Joffre 82 

XIII Champ Clark Throws Down the Gauntlet To 

Wilson 88 

XIV A German-born Supporter of Wilson 96 

XV Interview With Hovelaque, Intellectual 

Representative of France 102 

XVI The Relation of America To the Orphans and 

Universities of France 107 

XVn The Victor of the Marne — ^Joffre at Short 

Range 113 

XVIII Joffre and Vivlani in the American Senate. . . 118 

XIX Speeding-up of American Production For 

War-time. 1 122 

XX Speeding-up of American Production For 

War-time. II 129 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 

PAas 
XXI Organization of the Nation On War Basis 

Proceeds Apace 134 

XXII WooDRow Wilson and Arthur Balfour in the 

House of Representatives 140 

XXIII America Rallying in a Ferment of Activity . . 146 

XXIV Maryland's Capital in War-time. 152 

XXV Penn's City En Fete for the French Envoys . . 158 

XXVI Wilson and Roosevelt 164 

XXVII The Banquet of All the Talents at the 

Waldorf 173 

XXVIII British Preachers in New York: Hugh Black 

AND Jowett 181 

XXIX An Ensemble View of America's First Month 

AND A Half of War 190 



AMERICA AT WAR 



AMERICA AT WAR 



THE CAMPAIGIsr FOE THE MAKING OP PUBLIC OPINION" 

Chicago, April 14, 1917. 

A T the entrance to the Union depot at Mil- 
■^*- waukee I found the following recruiting 
appeal : ' ' To all brave, healthy, able-bodied and 
well-disposed young men in this neighbourhood 
who have any inclination to join the troops now 
raising under Gen. Washington in the defence 
of the liberties and independence of the United 
States, against the hostile desigTis of foreign 
enemies, take notice:" — (Beneath is the laconic 
injunction) "Do as our forefathers did in 
1776." 

What I saw in Milwaukee serves to confirm 
the analysis of German-American psychology 
made by Woehlke and Kuno Francke in the cur- 
rent issue of The Century Magazine. The lat- 
ter 's pronunciamento concludes with the words : 
'/My oath of loyalty to America knows no con- 

15 



16 AMERICAATWAR 

dition or reservations." This morning's issue 
of the Germania-Herold contains a report of 
certain recommendations ahont to be made by 
the Association of Milwaukee School Principals 
f o-r the betterment of the system. Among these 
is one to the effect that instruction in foreign 
languages should be suppressed in the four low- 
est grades of the Public Schools. Of course it 
will doubtless be easier to recommend this than 
to get it carried through. 

The big headline of the Chicago Daily Trib- 
une to-day is symptomatic : ' ' The U. S. to Win 
"War — Lloyd George." Here we have an illus- 
tration of the perfectly legitimate national 
pride of America, which will lead her, now she 
is in the war, to wage it in a way and on a scale 
worthy of her resources. The Tribune takes a 
strong line for compulsory service. A front 
page cartoon represents Uncle Sam sitting per- 
plexed in a stalled car, — Volunteer system ; two 
men, representing Army and Navy, have got 
out and got under and are doing their best to 
■ eliminate the trouble, but the car won't budge. 
The legend underneath is: ''This car never 
works when I want it to. ' ' The newspapers all 
up and down the country are pouring in hot 
shot that no population could resist. The head- 
lines are full of thrust and of cordiality for 
the Allies. * ' British Battle Snow and Germans, 
and Whip Both," is an example to-day. 



AMERICA AT WAR IT 

The trutli is, a campaign of extraordinary 
vigour for the manufacturing of public opinion 
is proceeding all up and down the country. The 
welkin is ringing with clarion calls of all sorts. 
The Ministerial Associations of Chicago have 
proposed that Sunday, April 22nd, be set aside 
as "Sow and Save Sunday." Economy and 
increased production are on every lip. Gover- 
nors of states, state legislatures or commit- 
tees appointed by these, and agricultural col- 
leges, are assuming the leadership of this move- 
ment. The potato expert of the Southern Pa- 
cific Railway to-day issues an appeal for re- 
trenchment in potatoes. ''Every decent potato 
in the country will be needed for seed," he says. 
He adds that an acre of potatoes represents ten 
times as much food* value as an acre of wheat. 
Here one sees the outcome of America's prac- 
tice in nation-wide campaigns of one sort and 
another. "Safety First," "Clean-up Week" 
propagandas, and all that kind of thing have 
accustomed this vast people to respond almost 
as one man to specific incitements. The people 
will now apply this method to war measures. 

The fact is, in comparison with them we Ca- 
nadians are the merest tyros in knowing how to 
achieve nation-wide action. The agricultural 
colleges and the universities have at one bound 
sprung into a position of leadership in prob- 
lems connected with the war. Ninety college 



18 AMERICAATWAR 

and university presidents are meeting in Chi- 
cago to concert measures as to how their insti- 
tutions can best contribute to meet the national 
exigencies. Day before yesterday 100 Illinois 
legislators visited the state university at Cham- 
paign. They wanted to find out what warrant 
there was for the large grants being asked for 
by the university. The university is asking five 
million dollars for the biennium and a ten mil- 
lioi; dollar building appropriation. The point I 
want to make is that the whole case advanced 
by the president and staff was conceived in na- 
tional terms. The demonstrations put on be- 
fore the legislators culminated in a review of 
two university regiments who are ready to 
serve their country. To realise the vigour of 
the collective action being taken in view of war, 
note the peremptory orders issued yesterday 
for the closing of all radio-stations or wireless 
equipments in and about Chicago. The order 
is said to have reference to no less than 4,000 
such installations in Chicago and in the terri- 
tory tributary to it. The apparatus will be 
confiscated if not taken out of commission with- 
in forty-eight hours. 

Running into Chicago I had a most illuminat- 
ing conversation with a traveller representing a 
Chicago steel firm. He expressed great satis- 
faction that at last the middle west was catch- 
ing up to the east in the matter of war delibera- 



AMERICAATWAR 19 

tion. When I referred to my gratification over 
the apparent state of feeling in Milwaukee, he 
said that, of course, as yet in states like Wis- 
consin this is a matter of the large towns. The 
small towns are still apathetic, and in some 
instances hostile. He cited the case of Sheboy- 
gan, a town 85 miles up the lake from Milwau- 
kee, 80 or 90 per cent, of the population Ger- 
man. Short time ago, referendum submitted on 
the war. Out of a population of 18,000, 12,000 
voted. Less than 100 voted for war with Ger- 
many. ''But,'* said he, *'the question was 
wro-ngly put : ' Are you, or are you not in favour 
of war?' Good heavens, who wants war? I 
don't, and yet I know we ought to go into this 
one." He cited the analogous case of Monro, 
a small Swiss-German town in the same state. 
The fact seems to be this. The overwhelming 
majority of the intellectual elements of the 
country have been hostile to Germany from the 
outset. From them it has spread to the general 
population, above all in the east. From the east 
this sentiment has spread west, where it has 
seized first the large towns and cities. The 
country is now in process of a movement that 
is destined rapidly to inoculate the population 
of small towns and of the agricultural districts. 
This movement of ideas is perfectly natural 
and normal, and I think we should be satisfied 
with it. 



20 AMERICAATWAR 

I have now to give you wliat I think much the 
best part of this Milwaukee-Chicago conversa- 
tion. My companion proceeded to tell me about 
his employer, Donald Ryerson, vice-president of 
the Ryerson Steel Company. He is thirty-three 
years of age. Has now and always had all that 
a man need desire in the way of wealth. He 
has resigned as vice-president of the company, 
has subscribed $85,000 to equip a submarine 
chaser, and is training for a lieutenant's com- 
mission. He will take charge of his own boat. 
Incidentally he is giving recruiting speeches. 
One of his 1,500 employees said, after hearing 
him speak: ''I wouldn't like to be a submarine 
if he comes up with it. He'd jump on it with 
a knife, if he hadn't anything else!" Talking 
to his employee, my interlocutor, Ryerson has 
said that what above all stung him into action 
was what he aptly called ''curb-stone criticism 
of the rich man's son." In other words he is 
going to do his part to show that rich America 
is not degenerate. We may take off our hats 
to wealthy America, so far -as he represents its 
spirit. A little latex as, standing on Michigan 
avenue, I watched the myriads of sumptuous 
motors roll past with dizzying swiftness, I said 
to myself: ''This war if America really par- 
takes of its agony will save the great soul of 
this country." And, really, one wonders what 
else would have achieved that salvation. 



n 

A TALK WITH A GEEMAN-AMEEICAK 

Earrishurg, Pa., April 16. 

WALKING down the streets of Pittsburg 
tliis morning I found them aglow — as 
much as anything could be aglow in that murky 
atmosphere — ^with flags. 

Yesterday a picture theatre proprietor, Coss- 
man by name, somewhat narrowly escaped 
lynching in Pittsburg. He scattered posters in- 
viting the public to visit his theatre to see a 
film that would show them why they should 
not participate in the European war. Being set 
on by the crowd, a policeman rescued him and 
at the same time took him into custody. Both 
had some difQculty making their way to the 
police station. 

Emerging from the Pittsburg depot I fell in 
with a German. Indeed, he overtook me and 
hailed me with a cordiality that a circumstance 
disclosed later will explain. The psychology 
of the German- American is a factor of no little 
importance in the present American situation; 
so I am going to try to detail as much as I can 
of my interview with him. He was born in 

21 



22 AMERICAATWAR 

America, but returned with his parents to Ger- 
many when he was four years old. He was 
educated there, passing through the gym- 
nasium, and then came back to this country. 
His mother is in Germany to-day. He was in 
England at the time of the Boer war. Spent 
two and a half years there. He is quite evi- 
dently a highly intelligent and alert fellow. 

The talk leaped at once to the war, and the 
first thing he said was ''I'll be damned glad 
when it's all over." When we had got seated 
at the breakfast table in the Fort Pitt hotel, I 
asked: "Have you any feeling that President 
Wilson did not do his very best to keep the 
United States out of the war?" He flushed, 
showed evident signs of excitement, and then 
said: "As far as my personal views are con- 
cerned, I have decided to keep my mouth shut. 
Then I can think what I please. No one can. 
keep me from doing that." From that time' 
forward for a little while I had to step a wary 
course. It looked for a bit as if he would not 
talk at all. Gradually, though, he thawed. 
Without trying to make a smooth story out of 
it I shall just rapidly detail his views. I have 
no doubt they are very symptomatic ; and when 
we recall the huge strain of German popula- 
tion living under the Stars and Stripes it is 
apparent that if we Canadians want to under- 
stand the intricacies of the American situation 



AMERICAATWAR «3 

we must try to fathom the German-American 
mentality. 

He said lie would not discuss the immediate 
origins of the present war. Suffice it to say, 
diplomacy was to blame for bad relations in 
Europe. Here England must bear her share 
of the blame. She should have recognised Ger- 
many's growing power. She should have given 
her an economic chance. She should have made 
a deal with her. They two could have assured 
the peace of the world. Wlien I asked: 
*' Didn't a man like Haldane do his best?" 
he admitted that Haldane did. *'What about 
Winston Churchill's proposal for a naval holi- 
day and an arrest of the mounting armament 
business? Did not Germany answer this by 
accelerating her building programme?" No 
answer to this. 

''I'll tell you something," he said. ''This is 
the beginning of the end of the white races. 
Japan is getting her work in with China while 
Europe is bleeding itself white. A clash be- 
tween the yellow and the white races is sure, 
and I'm afraid when the time comes the white 
races won't be there. There can be no 'patch- 
ing' between the yellow races and the white. 
You know you Canadians yourselves won't 
have the Oriental immigrants, which shows 
that you do not like them. And Europe is go- 
ing to be exhausted; because, mark what I 



M AMERICA AT WAR 

say, they are all — ^not Germany alone, but all 
of them — going to l>e on the verge of bank- 
ruptcy." I interjected: *'Do you mean that 
this war will leave such wounds that antago- 
nists of to-day will not co-operate when it be- 
comes desirable for them to meet a modernised 
Orient V * ' Oh, yes, they '11 co-operate, because 
they will have to; but they will not recover 
economically soon enough to meet the great 
danger that the future holds for them." 

I told him how I had admired the German 
people, and how their standard, classical litera- 
ture had always appealed to me. I spoke affec- 
tionately of a piece like Schiller's ^'Wilhelm 
Tell," and tried to argue from the qualities of 
that literature to the loyal, sterling characteris- 
tics of the German people. *'I think," I said, 
"and the majority of British citizens think, 
that the Germans are simply a misled people. 
They have been perverted by the kaiser and 
the Prussian military class." 

''You are mistaken," he said. He then 
gave me an analysis which may .have something 
in it, though I do not know that it gets rid 
of my charge of the perversion of a people 
by false aims and policies. ''The German peo- 
ple," K. said, "are the good, sterling people 
you picture. But they were a poor people. 
They were not successful traders. Their coun- 
try has not great resources naturally. Their 



AMERICAATWAR 25 

rulers decided, not in selfishness, but in the in- 
terests of the people themselves, that the old 
methods would not do. If the German people 
were to achieve competence, if it were to play 
any part in the world, it must be marshalled 
and directed by the state. The present kaiser 
has not done it all. Bismarck was one of the 
great ones, but the beginning lies even back 
of him. The government policy of concerning 
itself intimately with every part of the life of 
the people, so as to eliminate poverty, so as to 
promote trade — the kaiser has only completed 
that policy. The transformation has been ef- 
fected. The Germans are no longer a poor 
people. They have lost certain qualities in the 
process. (What these were he did not specify; 
and I did not like to press him too closely.) 

*'You talk about liberty. In England and 
America you have moral liberty, but you have 
not 'material' liberty." He here alluded to the 
gross poverty he had witnessed in London. 
''In Germany we don't have that. What good 
does it do me to say, I can do as I please, if 
I am so poor, or so starved that there is hardly 
anything I can do? And anyway, there is as 
much freedom of thought and speech in Ger- 
many as there is here in America." "What 
about arrests for lese majeste?" I asked. 
"You can't insult the kaiser, but neither can 
you insult any one else. One thing, I never 



26 AMERICAATWAR 

saw a man's head split open by tlie police in 
Germany, and I have seen it done a number 
of times here in free America." 

I asked him in so many words if he had a 
feeling of isolation under present circum- 
stances. He said he had. ''You know," he said, 
"there is a good deal of bitterness." He then 
added that I myself had had a narrow escape 
the night before on the train between Chicago 
and Pittsburg. I had been reading the Chi- 
cago Abendpost, and he confided in me that I 
had been the object of quite a few suspicious 
glances. I then realised that it was the cir- 
cumstance that he had seen me reading a Ger- 
man newspaper the night before that led him, 
in a feeling of very considerable isolation, to 
hail me at Pittsburg with some eagerness. I 
said that it was my intention to read the Ger- 
man-American papers as much as possible, be- 
cause I wished to get the point of view. ''Well, 
you'll not get it now, you may be sure." He 
went on to say that the majority of the Ger- 
mans in this country being American citizens, 
it would be wholly unwise of these papers, by 
voicing their real feelings, to incite these citi- 
zens to unwise action. The upshot is that this 
particular German feels to-day in America a 
sharp sense of isolation. He confesses that 
there is a feeling of bitterness on the part of 
his compatriots, which, however, he thinks will 



AMERICAATWAR 27 

find little expression in words and none in dis- 
ruptive action. 

At Johnstown, scene of tlie famous flood, the 
station platform was thronged with people 
waving flags. Three young men were leaving 
for Harrisburg to enlist. The scene was very- 
like those we witnessed in Canada in the early 
days of the war. 



Ill 



TO FEEE THE WOKLD OF BEIGANDAGE 

Washington, D. C, April 16. 
OUNDAY morning from 7 to 11 I had a de- 
^ lightful ride from Harrisburg, the capital 
of Pennsylvania, to Washington, the capital 
of the nation. Through smiling champaigns 
and beside winding brooks glancing in the sun- 
shine, we rolled. The first tender April green 
was just peeping from the branches of the 
trees. Only one other railroad ride have I 
ever had that I would compare with this one — 
a journey, similarly on a Sunday morning, in 
1904, from Liverpool to London. 

As we drew, through noble approaches, into 
Baltimore, I saw at one and the same time 
on the summits of five commanding eminences 
as many handsome country residences. From 
three of these floated the Stars and Stripes, 
evidence of the heightened feeling of the coun- 
try. God, how my heart glowed as I traversed 
this landscape, to think that at last this great 
country—its prosperity, broad-based in mate- 
rial resources, its soul swelling ever more 

28 



AMERICA AT WAR 29 

and more steadily into a splendid demonstra- 
tion of ideality — stands at last shoulder to 
shoulder with the little isle set in the silver 
sea, our beloved and imperial England! 

I neglected to tell earlier of an affecting 
thing I came upon in Chicago — a little detail 
that illustrates the multitude of forces, big and 
small, which are to-day operating on the Amer- 
ican war psychology. In a window of the 
arcade in the Stevens' building I saw a fair- 
haired boy doll dressed in shirt and suit said 
to have been made by a French mother from 
the garments worn by her son when he fell 
mortally wounded in the battle of the Marne. 
That mother has now given her five sons to 
the defence of France. Over the doll's heart 
is a dull red stain, declared to be the very blood 
of the French youth. Among all the chords to 
which the heart of America is to-day respond- 
ing, scarcely any is more powerful than ad- 
miration for the austerity of France through- 
out the present conflict, and grateful memory 
of what France did for America at the time 
of the "War of Independence. The Baltimore 
Sun this morning estimates the number of 
French soldiers who assisted the Americans in 
the Eevolutionary War at 45,000 ; and the finan- 
cial expenditure of France at that time in the 
American interest at not much less than three- 
quarters of a billion dollars. This reminis- 



so AMERICAATWAR 

cence bulked big Saturday in tbe congressional 
debate on the loan to the allies. 

At what an extraordinarily interesting con- 
juction I reach this noble capital, to watch for 
the Free Press the inception of the great enter- 
prise which is now engrossing the attention of 
the American people! Yesterday about 1 
'clock the House of Eepresentatives, without a 
dissenting vote, passed the bill appropriating 
for the prosecution of war with Germany seven 
billions of dollars — the largest single war ap- 
propriation made in the history of nations. 
This is the first big practical stroke of the policy 
which means the end of the tradition of Ameri- 
can isolation. The George Washington chapter 
of American history in this respect is closed. 

Secondly, it means that the sad circuit begun 
with the War of Independence is completed. 
The two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon 
family are once more united for the larger pur- 
poses of public policy. What is more, it means 
that America enters with a will on the task of 
ridding the world of piracy and brigandage. 
Here the task which the United States is daily 
more and more completely accepting as inte- 
grally her own represents a rock-bottom Anglo- 
Saxon principle. On the threshold of the litera- 
ture common to Britons and Americans stands 
Beowulf. Beowulf first rid the Hall of Heorot 
of the looting dragon Grendel, and then fol- 



AMERICAATWAR 31 

lowed the monster to its lair in the depths of 
the sea. Later Arthur and his knights set 
themselves to fell noisome forests, to drain 
miasmal swamps, to make the ways of the world 
safe and clear. To-day the new Beownlf or 
the new Arthur as you choose to think of it, 
in other words the reunited Anglo-Saxon race, 
sets itself to hunt the dragon from the seas 
and fields. 

It might easily he thought in Canada that 
undue emphasis is being laid here on the im- 
portance of conservation and production. That 
is, one might think that exaggerated importance 
is being given to the economic aspects of the 
war, to the relative exclusion of actual armed 
assistance. Undeniably the pendulum might 
swing too far that way. The Chicago Abend- 
Post Friday had a cartoon, ''1776 vs. 1917." 
Seventeen hundred and seventy-six showed the 
minuteman dropping his plough-handle and 
seizing his musket ; 1917 shows a western agri- 
culturist busy at work in the field. It would 
not be wise to decide hurriedly, however, that 
America will make this mistake. In the first 
place most of the advice she is receiving from 
Europe — the latest is the series of five des- 
patches on the mistakes of the allies, the first 
of which appeared this morning in the New 
York Tribune, and a syndicate of papers, in- 
cluding the Baltimore Sun — rings the changes 



S2 AMERICA AT WAR 

on food and supplies generally. Lord North- 
cliff e expressly says to America: ''You have 
no need to hurry unduly with your troops." 
Of course, he sa3^s this in contrast with his 
other remark: ''We, for our part, especially at 
the start, had to hurry." Secondly, we may 
be sure that American pride will insist on pro- 
viding effective armed aid, both on sea and 
land. In the third place, a little consideration 
of this enormous population shows that — par- 
ticularly if compulsory service by selective 
draft wins the day — the unattached and less 
confessedly productive elements of the popula- 
tion can produce a big army without crippling 
primarily productive classes. 

One thing that is sure is that in collective 
national thinking and planning with respect to 
war exigencies, the United States is farther 
advanced eight days after the declaration of a 
state of war than Canada is after two and a 
half years have passed. Canada, to the ever- 
lasting credit of her people, has produced four 
hundred thousand soldiers; but this has been 
done largely by individuals and by individualis- 
tic methods. Consider the lethargy of Cana- 
dian universities, which have done little or 
nothing collectively save the raising of the uni- 
versity battalions. Consider the failure of our 
agricultural colleges to assume any distinctive 
leadership in a campaign of accelerated pro- 



AMERICAATWAR 33 

duction. This is not meant by way of attack. 
Vast mimlbers, great wealth, matured national 
feeling create a momentum here that we can- 
not hope yet to vie with. But judging from 
the case of America, the imperative gospel for 
the Canada of the next twenty-five years is the 
conception and direction of virtually everything 
in national terms. 

Two little details I add : Washington hotels 
are "crammed to the roofs." After trying in 
vain the Shoreham and two others I desisted 
with cheerful philosophy and started for the 
Central Presbyterian church to get a glimpse 
of the President. Entering the vestibule I 
whispered naively to an usher: *'Is this the 
President's church?" "This is the church the 
President attends,'' came the equally whispered 
adjustment. I smiled to myself as I recalled 
the story of the lady who irately left Trinity 
church, Boston, on one occasion when she found 
that Phillips Brooks was not in his pulpit. 
"The worship of the Rev. Phillips Brooks will 
be continued next Sunday evening, madam," 
remarked the usher. 

On my way back to dinner I passed the Span- 
ish and the Russian embassies. I asked a man 
where the German embassy was. He pointed in 
a certain direction, and then added playfully, 
and I fancied very contentedly, "It is closed 
for the holidays — and then some." 



PEESS AlfTD PULPIT PTJSIIirG PUBLIC OPINION 

Washington, D. C, April 17th. 

IT is my business to assist in providing the 
readers of the Free Press with the mate- 
rials for a reasoned judgment on the condition 
of American opinion at this highly interesting 
time. Two agencies of moment at such a time 
are the pulpit and the press. As for the press 
it is overwhelmingly bombarding the country, 
east and west, north and south. The press is 
even in advance of opinion, as for example on 
the superiority of compulsory service to volun- 
tary enlistment. I have bought and read pa- 
pers now with assiduity in seven cities repre- 
senting both parties in Minnesota, "Wisconsin, 
Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, the District 
of Columbia, and New York. There is virtually 
one voice from all these. They are in favour 
of compulsory service according to the Presi- 
dent's plan of selective drafts. 

In connection with the pulpit, Winnipeggers 
and western Canadians generally will be 
pleased to know that J. L, Gordon is sweeping 
the decks here at Washington. I heard him 

34 



AMERICA AT WAR 35 

Sunday night in tlie First Congregational 
church addressing a state delegation of the 
Daughters of the American Revolution on 
''The Supreme Crisis." The church seats 
about twelve hundred, but there were at least 
sixteen hundred present. Every nook and 
cranny of the building was crowded. I myself 
sat on the steps leading to the platform. He 
spoke like a man possessed. His sermon was 
a powerful histrionic display. What is more, 
it was a rattling recruiting speech. The gal- 
leries were heavily hung with American flags, 
and a few feet over the speaker's head floated 
Old Glory. The meeting began with an impres- 
sive solo rendering of Kipling's Recessional, 
which seemed to evoke a sort of fundamental 
Anglo-Saxon feeling. Gordon swept every 
chord of American patriotic sentiment in his 
audience. The sermon was punctuated with 
salvo after salvo of applause. 

There were, he said, three great dates in 
American history: ''1620 when you planted 
your feet on this new soil; 1776 when you un- 
furled a new flag beneath the sky; 1917 when 
you will not prove unworthy of the continent 
or of the flag." The American people has 
endured insult after insult, outrage after out- 
rage at the hands of Germany. They have 
waited before entering the war till every culprit 
on the earth is left without excuse. To-day 



36 AMERICAATWAR 

America takes its place truly among tlie world 
powers. After tlie undivided vote on Satur- 
day for the seven billion dollar loan for the 
prosecution of the war, every congressman of 
the United States has a world status. ^ ' Thank 
God for Woodrow Wilson. Yonder he sits in 
the Executive Mansion planning for the imme- 
diate present and peering into the future. 
Every word that he now utters shows that he 
has caught a vision." America enters the war 
for the freedom of the seas. Germany has bid 
our ships skulk in our ports. ''Please God that 
will never happen again, if we have to sink 
every submarine ever built." (Applause). 
America enters the war for international law. 
''We ask that Kaiser and Crown Prince be 
swept from the throne." (Applause). We 
fight against Brute Force. "Prussia is an in- 
ternational burglar." We shall fight to save 
"the soul" of Germany. We fight for Universal 
Democracy. We fight for Peace, "the greatest 
paradox in history." "The meanest thing that 
ever crawled up out of hell is war. Let us drive 
it back where it comes from. Let your boys 
go to the British Isles, to France, and to Flan- 
ders. The sooner they get there, the sooner 
the job will be done." Canadians could ask 
for nothing better. 

As I circled round the White House in my 
first inspection of Washington, my eye was 



AMERICA AT WAR 37 

resting on the giant obelisk to the south. 
''What is that?" I said to two men who over- 
took me. They almost gasped. ''What is 
what ? ' ' The thing was so fundamental to them 
that they couldn't believe there could be any 
one who did not know. "Why that's Wash- 
ington's Monument — the Father of his coun- 
try, you know." "Oh, I know him by reputa- 
tion, but I'm not an American." "Where do 
you come from!" "From Winnipeg." "Oh, 
that's England — ^no, Canada; but then that's 
England, isn't it?" "Anyway we're in the 
same boat now, ' ' I volunteered. ' ' Mighty glad 
we are, sir, mighty glad we are. You'll get a 
warm welcome here now." This undistin- 
guished, average American moved on, happy 
and kindly. 

Fifteen minutes later I was on the north side 
of the White House — that plain old mansion 
of the chief magistrate before which the street- 
cars run as if with a sort of insistence on the 
right of democratic access. I had examined 
the statues of Lafayette, Rochambeau, and the 
Baron von Steuben, and at last, on the fourth 
corner, I was studying the monument to Kos- 
ciusko, presented to congress by the Poles of 
America. "I didn't know that Kosciusko had 
been in America," I said to two young men 
standing on the corner. One was a handsome, 
well set-up fellow, the other looked a little 



38 AMERICAATWAR 

broken and faded. *' Really I don't know, who 
was he anyhow?" the first said. *'What do you 
think about the war I" I asked. Pause. 
''Neutral," suggested the weaker looking man. 
''No, not neutral by any means, but — inactive," 
said the first. "Are you glad you're in!" I 
queried. "What else could we do? It's just 
the same as if your neighbour told you you 
mustn't use the street. Of course if you take 
his word for it, you'll have to stay in the 
house. But we don't think we have to. By the 
way, where did you buy that hat?" He looked 
crestfallen when I told him it had been bought 
in Winnipeg. "But Kosciusko — I don't under- 
stand. I didn't know he had come to Amer- 
ica." "Well," said the well-dressed, well built 
young man, "I'm sorry that you didn't buy 
that hat in Washington, because if you had I'd 
go and buy one like it. ' ' As the two moved away 
this reflection leaped into my mind: That 
young man represents the class of young Amer- 
ica that should be caught by Selective Draft. 
His mind is fully convinced. He is in tip-top 
physical condition, probably. Equally prob- 
ably he is not a primary producer. He is likely 
to side-step service if left to himself. He would 
accept service if the nation imposed it. Left 
to his rather butterfly, but by no means ignoble, 
self, his place would quite possibly be taken at 



AMERICAATWAR 39 

tlie front by some grimy artisan whose work is 
essential, or by some sturdy yeoman from the 
plains whose labour may be necessary to feed, 
not. simply this nation, but the world. 



y 



WAR FEELING IN CONGEESS 

Washington, D. C, April 18th. 
PJ^LAGS flutter more and more thickly in 
"*• WasMngton as the days pass. To-niglit 
for the first time the dining room of the Ebbitt 
House is draped with them. Outside they float 
in profusion on the roofs of buildings, from the 
windows of shops, on automobiles, motor 
cycles, and bicycles, over the heads of police- 
men directing traffic at the intersection of 
streets. 

I never in my life saw such heavy eating as 
is done in American hotels. The mountains of 
food set before men, women and children beat 
everything in toy experience. The other night 
I saw a man weighing two hundred and fifty 
pounds if he weighed an ounce, ordering and 
eating endlessly in company with a boy, evi- 
dently his son. The man was about in the class 
of Dick Burden, many years ago of ''bill-pos- 
ter" fame in Winnipeg. I thought it was a 
gross exhibition. I said to myself, there is 
degenerate middle-age America teaching young 
America to be degenerate. I had no doubt 

40 



AMERICAATWAR 41 

I had hit the nail exactly on the head. 
The next evening I passed the same man in 
the rotunda of the hotel, and as I passed him 
I heard him say to a friend, ''I'm here to 
break into that mosquito fleet." Then I realised 
that I had been too quick in my judgment, and 
into my mind, to my own disadvantage, came 
Wordsworth's words about "rash judgTaents 
and the sneers of thoughtless men." 

The greatest reticence is being observed with 
regard to the arrival of Mr. Balfour and his 
party. This morning, with the newspapers 
confidently announcing his advent for to-day 
and his reception at the White House to-mor- 
row by the President, the British embassy was 
completely in the dark as to when he would 
land on American soil, even as to whether he 
would disembark at an American or a Canadian 
port. The recollection of the Kitchener trag- 
edy is a potent incentive to silence. In this 
connection Canadian observers need not be 
chagrined if more eclat attaches to Joffre's 
entrance into America than to Balfour's. 
The French mission is designed for legitimately 
sentimental purposes. It is expected to con- 
sist of a very small party. The British mis- 
sion will devote itself to work and it is believed 
that it may have a personnel of from forty to 
fifty. The British policy is to "saw wood," 
but to indulge in as little publicity as possible, 



42 AMERICAATWAR 

so as not to give tongue to factions elements 
who might raise a cry of '^ British direction" 
of American policy. On the whole I am much 
pleased with the tone of references here to 
Great Britain. The dominant note is that of 
respect for the straightforwardness of British 
diplomacy and for British power and farsight- 
edness. The New York Tribune in a masterly 
two-column leader this morning says : *' We are 
now entering the British period of the war." 

To-day I spent six hours in the Press gal- 
lery of the senate. Before covering that I may 
allude to my first glimpses of the Houses, got 
yesterday from the ordinary galleries. Abso- 
lutely the first figure that caught my eye in 
the senate was Henry Cabot Lodge. I was 
familiar with his appearance because in 1911 
in Boston I heard him give in the Symphony 
hall what was the finest political speech I ever 
heard. He has a neat, trim, self-reliant figure, 
and moves freely about the chamber with a 
sort of dean-like nonchalance. On the occasion 
of this, my first experience of the American 
Senate, Owen, of Oklahoma, delivered a speech 
marked by a well-informed review of European 
diplomacy, and by a fiery denunciation of Prus- 
sian militarism, the Divine-right theory of the 
Hohenzollerns, and Prussian dragooning of 
Germany at large. He made favourable ref- 
erence to Great Britain in 1822, ''already then 



AMERICAATWAR 43 

a great nation exemplifying representative gov- 
ernment and loving liberty, ' ' opposing the Holy 
Alliance in its designs against democracy. He 
said the statue of Frederick, *' so-called the 
Great, ' ' now standing in front of the American 
war college, ''should be gently but firmly 
dropped into the Potomac." He estimated the 
number of Araerican lives wilfully taken by 
Germany since the outbreak of the war at about 
two hundred, and the number of neutral ships 
destroyed by the same power at over seven 
hundred. 

Emerging from the House of Representatives 
I met and had a most agreeable chat with 
Representative Temple, of Illinois. He was 
formerly Professor of Diplomatic History in 
the University of Pennsylvania, and is now a 
member of the Foreign Relations committee 
of the House. He explained to me the proposed 
provisions of the army bill which is still in 
committee. ''Canada," he said, "has raised 
in the neighbourhood of 400,000 men. That 
means one-twentieth of your population or five 
per cent. Five per cent, of our 100,000,000 
would give us an army of 5,000,000. There is 
no proposal at present to raise any such num- 
ber." The President's proposals fall into 
three groups, (a) To bring the regular army 
plus the state militia, now nationalised, up to 
a war footing of 500,000 by voluntary enlist- 



44 AMERICAATWAR 

ment; (b) national registration of all eligible 
males; (c) from the resources disclosed by this 
to raise successive units of 500,000 each, as 
they may be needed, and as they can be trained. 
The instruction of a larger force at the moment 
would threaten to denude the regular army of 
its officers. He said the proposal had been 
voiced in some quarters that America should 
fight with money, but, said he, 'Hhat proposal 
found no response in the House. It is nothing 
other than the liberty of the world that is at- 
tacked, particularly by submarining. We can- 
not wage such a war by proxy. I feel for my 
own part, that I never could hold up my head 
in Canada, in England, or in any other foreign 
country, if we had taken such a position." 

Now, I find my space gone and I have not 
covered the great debate of to-day on the seven 
billion dollar bill for the prosecution of the 
war. The Canadian public knows long before 
this that the debate ended with the unanimous 
passage of the bill. Here I shall simply quote 
a few of the outstanding sentences pronounced 
in part by those not supporting the bill in all 
particulars, but who nevertheless voted for it. 
Kellogg, the famous "trust-busting" lawyer, 
of Minnesota, supporting the bill, said : ''There 
is no safety for America until the Prussian 
dynasty is driven from power. ' ' Stone of Mis- 
souri, Democratic chairman of the committee 



AMERICAATWAR 45 

on foreign relations, made a shrewd cover- 
hunting speech in whicli he argued that a larger 
share of the first year's expenses of th^ war 
than was proposed by the bill should be paid 
out of current taxation. ''Pay as you enter 
and pay as you go is sound policy. Wiser to 
pay current liabilities of war by taxation of 
wealth than transmit burden to industry of 
future generations who have no say in deter- 
mining present policy." Thomas, of Colorado, 
approved this : ' ' One way to make the people 
hate war is to make the present generation pay 
•as it goes." Shafroth, of Colorado: ''Expen.- 
diture great, "but world results of winning the 
war will warrant us in what we are doing." 
Cummins, of Iowa; ''I would rather make a 
gift than a loan to the allies. Apprehend dan- 
ger in the United States becoming bondhold- 
ing creditor of the allies." McCumber, of 
North Dakota: ''We have not yet put a man 
in the field. We should be very liberal with our 
money." Kenyon, of Iowa, who paid a great 
tribute to France : "This bill carries a message 
to the kaiser that the mighty republic of the west 
is opposed to him to the death. ' ' Eeed Smoot, of 
Utah, supporting the bill unreservedly, said: 
"If the president saw fit to advance a billion to 
Russia, without any prospect of return, I should 
be glad to see it done if it would substitute a 
republic for autocracy in that country." 



VI 



THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR — ^A DAY IN THE SENATE 

Washington^ D. C, April 19th. 
INTRODUCTIONS from Sir James Aikins 
-'■ and from Premier Norris were to thank 
this morning for a charming interview with His 
Excellency Sir Cecil Spring Rice, British Am- 
bassador at Washington. He in turn was good 
enough- to accord me introductions to Ambas- 
sador Jusserand and Senator Henry Cabot 
Lodge. He complimented the Free Press on 
its action in sending a representative to Wash- 
ington. The ambassador referred cordially to 
happy days he had spent in the Canadian 
Northwest. On the mantel-piece were two 
photographs of His Excellency's brother, who 
resided at Pense, Saskatchewan, and who fell 
in France a year ago. The ambassador alluded 
to a tablet which is shortly to be put in posi- 
tion in that place in his brother's memory. He 
said he should like very much to go to Pense 
on that occasion but that the eight days- neces- 
sary would be very difficult to find in these criti- 
cal times. He alluded to the special keenness 
with which His Excellency the Duke of Devon- 

46 



AMERIC[A.ATWAR 47 

shire had enjoyed his recent western visit. He 
said the governor-general had been deeply im- 
pressed with the vitality and capacity of West- 
ern Canadian life. 

I find that the tone of comment on the line 
of action adopted by the embassy in this coun- 
try since the outbreak of the war is very favour- 
able. The policy of leaving the American peo- 
ple strictly to make up its own mind on the 
war in its own way, is now seen to have been 
excellently conceived. 

The state of war now existing here has pro- 
duced a condition of heightened public feeling 
that is finding its reflection, in the senate at 
any rate, in a series of powerful debates. I 
have already adverted in despatches to the 
powerful speech delivered by Borah, of Idaho, 
on the censorship sections of the Espionage 
Bill. Borah is spoken of as the most formi- 
dable debater in the senate. His speech on this 
occasion was evidently looked forward to, and 
it proved fully worthy of expectations. 11? was 
listened to with closer interest than any other 
speech I have yet heard here. It amounted to 
a root and branch attack on censorship. He 
claimed that with evident design the framers 
of the constitution had denied the right of the 
legislature under any circumstances to abridge 
the power of the press. The sections under 
fire, he said, involved the creation of a licensing 



48 AMERICA AT WAR 

power which must be consulted before publica- 
tion. The whole spirit of the constitutional 
provision is that the press must be left to its 
own sense of responsibility. After publication 
it can be proceeded against for sedition or 
treason without the aid of a new statute. 

Thus far in the debate the spokesmen for the 
administration's provisions have been out- 
pointed all along the line. Brandegee, Lodge, 
Johnson, Borah have so far in this connection 
met no adequate antagonists. Right of publi- 
cation, said Borah, in the view of the constitu- 
tion, is to be left unrestrained, subject to the 
sole and sufficient liability of the publisher to 
appropriate punishment. ''The dangers of 
possible aid to the enemy even are not com- 
mensurate with the danger's flowing from cur- 
tailment of the rights of the press." Inciden- 
tally I may interject that the New York Times, 
of this morning under the caption, ''A Tyran- 
nous Measure," suggests that the full end 
sought may be attained by proper control of 
the cables. Even more powerfully than Lodge 
yesterday, Borah alluded to the achievements 
of the Northcliffe Press during the war. ''Has 
there been, I ask you, a more distinct service 
rendered to British arms than that rendered 
by the Northcliffe Press, whose strictures could 
not have been published under provisions of 
this statute I" 



AMERICA AT WAR 49 

A response from the other side, not adequate 
in force but entitled to respect, was made by 
Knute Nelson, a senator of Norwegian birth 
from Minnesota. He fought in the Civil War 
and alluded with splendid effect to incidents of 
that struggle. *'He was more concerned about 
the safety of our soldiers and sailors than with 
the supposed interests of newsmongers." In 
the Civil War the northern armies had been 
again and again prejudiced by publicity as to 
movements. Before they knew it what they 
were about to do was known at Richmond. 
Here, I thought, was a delicate situation. The 
Minnesota senator righted it instantly, how- 
ever, by adding: ''And the Confederate arm- 
ies suffered in the same way, as I have been 
told by citizens of the south." Tliis passage 
was a fine tribute to the completeness with 
which that great national wound has been 
healed. The senator's argument in essence was 
that war power confers police power. The con- 
stitutional guarantees of free speech and publi- 
cation are subrogated in time of war. Repub- 
lican as he is, he said he was fully prepared to 
trust the President, who would not use his pow- 
ers tyrannously. There was a certain home- 
spun air about the Minnesota senator's argu- 
ment that made it very attractive; and above 
all it was worthy of respect as an expression of 



50 AMERICAATWAR 

the best type of gemiinely Amerioanised Euro- 
peanism. 

Johnson, of California, to whom special in- 
terest attaches because of his career and be- 
cause of his recent accession to the Republican 
caucus, intervened with a short but admirably 
phrased address against the bill. ''He was 
concerned not with the press, but with freedom 
of speech. This war is not a partisan war, but 
a war of all America. America is the light of 
the world in democracy. We must stop short 
of an assault on fundamental democracy. To 
make felons of our citizens is an excursion into 
autocracy that cannot be permitted.^' The ex- 
pectation is that Johnson will prove a great 
accession to the debating power of the senate. 

I add a paragraph in order to record a com- 
ment of unusual interest. I have been strongly 
impressed with the consciousness of a great 
tradition observable in the American senate. 
Commenting to this effect to a representative 
of a, leading New York paper, he rejoined: 
"No, its back is broken. The starch has gone 
out of it. Even as late as McKinley's time 
ready-made legislation handed to the senate by 
the administration would have been flung in the 
waste-paper basket. To-day all the big bills are 
handed to the Houses, ready-made. Roosevelt 
began the process of breaking down the 
Houses. The reason lay in the development of 



AMERICA AT WAR 51 

national feeling of which Roosevelt knew him- 
self to be the organ. This breaking-down has 
been carried still farther by the present saga- 
cious occupant of the White House." This 
comment, any one can see, is extraordinarily 
interesting as concerning a phenomenon, which, 
in the light of British practice, we should be 
disposed to regard as ensuing from an unwise 
separation of the executive and the legislative 
functions. 

WTiile admitting that profound changes are 
in progress, I cannot agree that the senate has 
by any means lost its great traditions. I have 
now heard well on to half the members of the 
senate. I have not yet heard one poor speech 
of a substantive character. One man in the 
back row I may allude to. I might designate 
him by name, but it is not necessary. Through 
three days I saw him sit like a man who might 
have one foot in the grave. To-day on the 
Espionage bill, he rose to a high and grave 
defence of the bill. * ' The general terms of the 
constitution must be interpreted in light of the 
exigencies of society under hazardous condi- 
tions." He cited- with fine effect Marshall's 
''It is a constitution we are interpreting." The 
senate may be less masterful in action than it 
once was. Of that I am not competent to speak ; 
but it is still at any rate impressive in debate 



VII 



SOME PUBLIC MEN IN" ACTION" 

Washington, D. C, April 20th. 
J SAW a number of persons and things in 
"'• action to-day for the first time. To begin 
with, the President himself. Of him I caught 
my initial sight in the Chief Executive's room 
adjoining the senate lobby. He is a man of 
shorter figure, stockier build and higher colour 
than I had supposed. He had come to the 
capitol to speed up the administration's army 
bill. The House military committee, by the 
way, was simultaneously rejecting the selective 
draft scheme proposed by the President and 
the Secretary of State for war. By a vote of 
12 to 8 it expressed a preference for trying the 
volunteer system first. At the time that I saw 
Mr. Wilson he was closely engaged in conversa- 
tion with Senator Owen, of Oklahoma. Bear- 
ing in mind the constitiitional separation be- 
tween executive and legislative functions in the 
American system, there is something extremely 
interesting to a British observer in this contact 
between the chief magistrate and the legisla- 
tors in rooms adjoining the chambers. There 

52 



AM.ERICA AT WAR 63 

is plenty of bone in President Wilson's control 
of the national machine. He holds a tight rein. 
If is apparent on all hands that the. prestige 
of Mr. Wilson has latterly been greatly en- 
hanced. The causes are not far to seek. 

First, there was his re-election with a large 
popular majority, an event which accrued the 
more notably to his advantage because he was 
for a time supposed to be in jeopardy. Then 
came the declaration of the state of war, which 
was unquestionably a great relief to the lead- 
ing elements of the nation. Finally, there is 
the formidable concentration of power in his 
person inevitable under war conditions. An il- 
lustration of this last is found in the bill on 
espionage and related matters now under ad- 
visement in both chambers. This bill, as drawn, 
confers on the President powers the enumera- 
tion of which almost takes one's breath away. 

Next, to-day for the first time, I saw Henry 
Cabot Lodge, easily the most highly cultivated 
man in the two branches of congress, in action 
in the senate. Readers of this column will re- 
member that Root, the only man in point of 
intellectual cultivation in the late congress who 
could be named in the same breath with Lodge, 
is no longer in the senate. The interval be- 
tween the rawest representative in the lower 
house and Lodge, the dean of the senate and the 
fine flower of the best New England tradition. 



64 AMERICA AT WAR 

is immense. If you run up the line from the 
one to the other of these two extremes the view 
you get of the forces operating in a grand 
democratic state is picturesque and pecuharly 
vital. Lodge's acute, intellectualised, high-bred 
face is a fine study. He seems marked by a 
fine personal courtesy that still does not ex- 
clude ever and anon flashes of incisive anger. 
He is as quick as chain lightning. In no mat- 
ter what part of the chamber he is strolling 
nonchalantly — his hands more often than not 
thrust deep in his pockets — he grows alert in 
an instant the moment a word is dropped on 
any subject in which he specialises. 

To-day Senator Lodge was taking exception 
to the drastic terms of certain sections of the 
espionage bill. The gravamen of his attack 
was that the recently created censorship board 
was wrongly constituted. Under the chairman- 
ship of a journalist it consists of the secretaries 
of the army and the navy, precisely the officials, 
contended Lodge, whose administration should 
be vitalised by as full a criticism as is com- 
patible with the national interest. He cited as 
proof of what England permitted in war time 
the free criticism of the Northcliffe papers 
which had been the means of ousting officials, 
and unseating governments. There was some- 
thing undeniably appropriate in the spectacle 
of this choice scion of New England champion- 



AMERICAATWAR 65 

ing the cause of free discussion. In the fine 
continuity of Anglo-Saxon traditions this scene 
in the American senate in 1917 ran straight 
back to the noble "Areopagitica" of John Mil- 
ton. 

Brandegee, of Connecticut, followed the 
senior senator from Massachusetts on similar 
lines. He contended that one clause of the es- 
pionage bill in particular was at variance with 
the provisions in the constitution safeguarding 
freedom of speech. He made a very powerful 
and rightly ingratiating argument. I shall be 
surprised if I do not find that Brandegee has 
one of the best parliamentary manners in the 
senate. Hiram Johnson, the California Pro- 
gressive, who, by the way, yesterday joined th& 
Republican caucus, intervened in the midst of 
Brandegee 's speech — this habit of free inter- 
polation is one of the most interesting manner- 
isms of Congress — to say: ''Let us be careful 
that in our sensibility to the progress of democ- 
racy abroad we do not forget to safeguard 
democracy at home." Judging by the impres- 
sive speeches in criticism of this bill, of which 
the three I have cited were simply the most 
eminent, I imagine the bill will emerge from the 
senate with its fangs somewhat drawn. 

Then, to-day I got my first real view of the 
House of Representatives. The bill under dis- 
cussion, and which passed triumphantly, was 



56 AMERICAATWAR 

one to permit the allied nations to recruit their 
nationals within the bounds of the United 
States. It was said in the course of the debate 
that there are four hundred thousand citizens 
of the allied nations in this country. The num- 
ber seems modest, particularly when one re- 
calls the high figure at which German citizens in 
America are placed. Woehlke, in the article 
in the Century, to which I have already al- 
luded in this correspondence, puts the number 
of these at one million. A seasoned journalist 
told me to-day that the last census put them at 
two million; but I rather fancy the German 
writer is more nearly correct. Incidentally it 
may be pointed out that if the allies avail them- 
selves of the privilege accorded them by this 
bill, and if allied nationals in this country re- 
spond in large numbers, it might have an im- 
portant influence on American recruiting, 
should the administration be forced away from 
its policy of selective drafting. This may be 
the case in any event because the President's 
plan, as at present proposed, provides for the 
voluntary enlistment of some seven hundred 
thousand men. 

Studying the House one realises that here one 
is very considerably closer to the raw citizen- 
ship of America than in the case of the senate. 
The separate desks of the upper chamber here 
give place to long benches, with unallotted 



AMERICAATWAR 57 

seats. Noise, hubbub, crowding are the order 
of the day. A good deal of the speaking is 
of the biscuit-box or wash-tub type. This with- 
out suggesting for a moment that there are not 
many very able men in the house. As a matter 
of fact, I infer that a fine sterling temper ani- 
mates the very great majority of the members 
of this branch of Congress. 



vni 

AMERICANISM NOW IF THE SADDLE 

Washington, April 26. 
'T^ 0-DAY, as I rode through the streets of 
-*■ Washington in the course of a circuit that 
I shall refer to later, I found the flags of the 
United States, France and Britain intertwined 
or floating side by side on a fairly large num- 
ber of buildings. The motor in which I was, 
carried the three emblems. 

I have been rather struck hitherto with the 
absence from public discussions on the war of 
distinct references to the common heritage pos- 
sessed by Britons and Americans in the matter 
of language, literature, common law and parlia- 
mentary institutions. There is no lack of allu- 
sion to democracy, liberty and representative 
government, all of which are freely conceded to 
have been imperilled by German designs; but 
the common element has not been much dwelt 
upon. This note is struck to-day by the Wash- 
ington Times. It refers to "the great nation 
that has financed the war, driven the enemy 
from the surface of the sea, fed and munitioned 
her allies, and at length raised an army that 

68 



AMERICAATWAR 69 

is smashing its way through the German lines 
with a steadiness and pluck and contempt of 
death that ought to send a thrill of pride 
through every man who can boast of English 
blood, who has inherited English ideals, or who 
speaks the English tongue." 

One can hardly overestimate the influence 
that the war legislation which is now engaging 
the attention of Congress is bound to have in 
Americanising the United States. For the first 
time on a grand scale the new America which 
has grown up since the Civil War is being called 
upon to think and act as a unit. The war loan 
bill, which is now virtually ready for the presi- 
dent's signature, the censorshi'p bill, which now 
apparently promises to get through more nearly 
scot-free than I had thought possible, the army 
and navy bills which are on the threshold of 
both houses, followed by the revenue bill for the 
imposition of war taxation, will be the expres- 
sion, as I imagine no legislation since the Civil 
War has been the expression, of a triumphant 
national idea. Henceforth irruptions subver- 
sive of national unity must, if they take place 
at all, be fitful and ineffectual. An American 
union, in the words of Webster, ''one and in- 
divisible, now and forever," is, in all human 
probability, from this point forward an accom- 
plished fact. This is one of the great things 
America will have done for herself by her deci- 



60 AMERICAATWAR 

sion to participate in the great war. President 
Wilson, in a letter to Representative Helvering, 
published to-day, and designed no doubt further 
to indicate his intention of standing to his guns 
in the matter of selective conscription, says : 
''The bill, if adopted, will do more, I believe, 
than any other single instrumentality to create 
the impression of universal service in the army 
and out of it, and, if properly administered, will 
be a great source of stimulation." 

One can imagine, though one is not disposed 
to emphasise the fact, that the proposal, made 
by Mr. Roosevelt, and backed by many in his 
behalf, that he should be permitted to recruit 
a division for service in Europe, creates a po- 
litical difficulty for the President as the chief 
of his party. It is not to be forgotten that even 
the administration's proposals for the raising 
of an army involve the voluntary enlistment of 
from six to seven hundred thousand men. The 
enlistments to date, since the declaration of a 
state of war, if I am not mistaken, number only 
some twelve thousand. Roosevelt himself to- 
day comes back to the subject by referring to 
the fact that Gov. Whitman has offered him any 
commission within the gift of the state of New 
York, but he adds that he would prefer a na- 
tional commission. Now, if Roosevelt raised a 
division, succeeded in getting it trained, took it 
to Europe, and survived the campaign, it is in 



AMERICAATWAR 61 

the mind of many that that achievement would 
elect him president in 1920. The solution that 
will be given to this problem will certainly be 
worth watching for. 

In commenting upon the excellence of the cen- 
sorship debate in the senate I neglected to point 
out that the constitutional aspects of that ques- 
tion were admirably calculated to elicit the 
strong points of that chamber. The American 
senate is a house of lawyers. I fancy that over 
eighty of its ninety-six members belong to the 
■ bar. Reed, of Missouri, who by the way some- 
what resembles Premier Norris in appearance, 
was one of the speakers in the closing hour 
of the debate this afternoon. He speaks delib- 
erately with, ever and anon, a fine sweep of 
gesture. ''Let us go forward," he said, ''but 
in going forward let us keep within the four 
corners of the constitution." 

Introduced by a letter from President Mac- 
Lean, I had the pleasure to-day of a chat with 
Senator Borah.' He is a man of sturdy, massive 
face and figure. He said that he was familiar 
with the Free Press, and made some very in- 
teresting remarks on the success of responsible 
government as worked out under the British 
system. 

With Mr. James Fisher, of Winnipeg, who 
is at the moment in Washington, I had the 
pleasure to-day of a little excursion into Vir- 



62 AMERICAATWAR 

ginia. We were the guests of Dr. Bell, a pro- 
fessor in an Episcopal theological college, sit- 
uated at Alexandria, on the southern side of 
the Potomac. On the way to the home of Dr. 
and Mrs. Bell, we passed and stopped at the 
mansion of Gen. Robert Lee, the great Con- 
federate leader. The house of onr host and 
hostess stands in the noble Seminary park of 
some two hundred acres overlooking the Poto- 
mac. The White House is only seven miles 
away. Our host told us that Virginia, which 
has been left untouched by foreign immigra- 
tion, contains the purest English population in 
the United States. I could not help contrasting 
it in this regard with the great commonwealth 
of Massachusetts, which is now aswarm with 
Americans of foreign extraction. I remember 
in 1901 being for a day at a place in that state 
called Stow. The farm next the place I was 
visiting was owned by a Scandinavian. Stow 
is only a few miles from the old Sudbury Inn, 
immortalised by Longfellow in his "Tales of a 
Wayside Inn." Plymouth, the first home of 
the Pilgrim fathers, swarms with foreigners. 
The summer the war broke out I attended an 
Independence day celebration in Faneuil Hall, 
one of the cradles of the American republic. 
The chairman was the Irish mayor of Boston. 
The Declaration of Independence was read by 
an Italian boy. The invocation was pronounced 



AMERICAATWAR 63 

by a Jewish rabbi. The oration was delivered 
by Father Freeman, an Irish priest. But it is 
different in Virginia. Dr. Bell put it this way : 
''From the beginning of the war America at 
large has been rather pro-French than pro- 
British. Virginia, though, has been steadily 
pro-British rather than pro-French. The joy 
of this old English stock over the satisfactory 
position of the country to-day is great." Dr. 
Bell said that the great work of the last two 
and a half years in the United States has been 
a spontaneous campaign of education on the 
issues and significance of the war carried on by 
editors, university men and preachers. At last 
the great idea has infiltrated the masses of the 
country, or at least such a preponderant body 
of them that the situation is saved. I am 
strictly reproducing his statements here. I 
was struck by the periodicals lying on the 
library table — the Fortnightly, Land and 
Water, Pimch. On the way to Alexandria 
we rode past Fort Myer, a military post, desig- 
nated — so said Dr. Bell — to be one of four- 
teen, located in different parts of the country, 
at each of which 2,500 officers are to be trained 
for the new American army. 



IX 



PUBLIC OPINION STERN AGAINST SEDITION 

Washington, D. C, April 27th. 
"D Y tiie pleasantest of accidents I came once 
-'--' again on the trail of the big man who was 

"trying to break into the mosquito fleet." As 
a matter of fact, he insisted on my going with 
him Saturday night to see David Warfield in 
''The Music Master." I was thus able to ques- 
tion him in detail about his "mosquito fleet" 
proposal. By now he has learned that the gov- 
ernment will not give him a commission owing 
to his health, but the offer of his yacht has 
been accepted. It is a gasoline yacht and has 
a motor radius of six hundred miles. The gov- 
ernment pays him a nominal rental of one dollar 
a month to cover some legal point. He says 
that what he called "the tightening up" of the 
mosquito fleet promises to keep submarining 
off the American coast in hand. The estuaries 
like Chesapeake Bay and so on are already in 
a good state of preparation. He is a Virginian 
and a Quaker. 

Virginia is evidently ' ' fighting mad. ' ' In my 
last message I reported the temper of a theo- 
logical professor of that state who is a mem- 

64 



AMERICA AT WAR 65 

ber of an old Virginian family, whose wife is 
closely related to the family of General Robert 
Lee, and who says he knows every inch of his 
native state. Add to this my *' yacht'' man, 
whose home is about 80 miles from Washing- 
ton. Then, just as I was going in to dinner to- 
night, this happened. A group of six boys of 
about eighteen years or thereabouts, stood chat- 
ting at the door. One, a handsome, soft-voiced 
boy, was evidently slightly under the influence 
of liquor. Again I heard, '^'m going to join 
the mosquito fleet." The similarity of the re- 
mark to that of the older man a few nights ago 
struck me and I exchanged some words with 
him. ''I'm going to have one more good time 
before I go." He came close to me and said, 
*'I may be dead in two months, but I don't care 
a straw if I sink six Germans before I go." 
When I said I was a Canadian, his voice soft- 
ened, the slightly maudlin tone disappeared and 
he grasped my hand warmly. ''I'm from old 
Virginia. I'm pained to the heart that we 
haven't done as well as Canada, but we're going 
to do better now." 

One of the most notable things of the mo- 
ment is the whole-hearted attitude of the Amer- 
ican Roman Catholic hierarchy towards the 
war. The address of the Catholic archbishops 
of the United States, headed by Cardinal Gib- 
bon, is unreserved in its declaration of devo- 



66 AMERICAATWAR 

tion to President Wilson in his policy. Among 
the signatories are Archbishop Moeller, of Cin- 
cinnati, and Archbishop Messner, of Milwaukee, 
who, I have small doubt, are of German extrac- 
tion. Evidently the Catholic Church in the 
United States is not afraid to identify itself 
cordially with the flowing stream of American 
opinion and effort. 

A conspicuous feature of the situation to-day 
is the virtual freedom of America from sedi- 
tious disturbance. There have been since the 
declaration of a state of war fewer acts of 
violence than in similar intervals during many 
stages since the outbreak of the European hos- 
tilities. To realise the import of this, one must 
recall what many anticipated would happen 
should the United States enter the arena. Many 
imagined that the forests and mountains of 
America would be fastnesses from which aero- 
planes would sweep on errands of destruction, 
and all that sort of thing. And it must be ad- 
mitted that such depredations would have 
seemed rather easily feasible. Nothing of the 
kind, apparently, is occurring. A virtually 
complete tranquillity reigns throughout foreign 
America. One cause, even if the observer does 
not care to adopt the most optimistic view that 
might be advanced, is the imposing weight of 
the temper of the people as a whole. The pre- 
dominant elements of a nation of one hundred 



AMERICA AT WAR 61 

million are aroused. Peace-breakers know for 
one thing that they would get short shrift in 
the present state of American opinion. There 
is plenty of iron to-day in the blood of America. 
This is one great strength that the United 
States reaps in this crisis from the fact of its 
imposing population. 

Last night as I rose to my feet in the dining- 
room during the rendering of ' * The Star-Span- 
gled Banner, ' ' I asked a coloured waiter which 
is the most popular of the patriotic airs. 
''That's it, right there," he said. Then he 
proceeded to tell me of an incident that oc- 
curred in that same room a few nights ago. A 
senator of the United States failed to stand 
when "The Star-Spangled Banner" was 
played. Soon the place was full of confusion. 
It looked for a moment as if the senator would 
be "hustled" from the place. The negro told 
me that one man said, after trying several times 
to get the apparently refractory man to rise 

to his feet : "I called you Senator , I called 

you Mr. , but now I call you old ," 

hailing him with a very colloquial version of his 
name. I thought I would report this incident, 
if, after checking, it proved to be correct. I 
learned later that the senator in question has 
been a determined opponent of the coloured 
people. He claims that the amendment of the 
constitution extending the franchise to negroes 



68 AMERICA AT WAR 

was never properly ratified by tlie states. This 
explains the animus of the coloured man, but 
the incident also stands as illustrating the pop- 
ular temper. 

Wilson is an astute politician. He is also a 
man of imagination. He is reported to be con- 
sidering an American delegation to Petrograd 
to encourage and assist the new government in 
its problems. He is also supposed to be con- 
sidering ex-Senator Root as head of the com- 
mission. If this should be done it would effec- 
tually exemplify the blurring of party lines that 
has been induced by the war condition. Of the 
same import is the fact that, a majority of the 
House committee on military affairs having de- 
cided to report unfavourably on the President's 
army plan, to the extent of throwing on him 
the responsibility of inaugurating conscrip- 
tion if it has to be inaugurated, Kahn, 
the ranking Republican on the committee, is 
slated to "steer" the administration measure 
through the lower chamber. To revert to the 
project with respect to Russia: The papers 
are pointing out that an American committee 
of assistance to Russia at this juncture would 
be of a piece with Lafayette 's coming to Amer- 
ica at the time of the Revolutionary War. Army 
officers at that time on this side pooh-poohed 
the value of the service that the Frenchman 
could render. But Washington realised the 



AMERICAATWAR 69 

moral value, at any rate, of Lafayette's arrival, 
and welcomed him with open arms. Washing- 
ton had imagination, which people dominated 
by routine rarely have, and his judgment was 
justified by the event. 

Saturday night after we had seen Warfield in 
his charming play, my cordial big Virginian, 
speaking of Roosevelt's wanting to go to 
France, said : ' ' All over this country there are 
great numbers of dare-devil Americans who 
would follow Teddy to the mouth of hell." 

Sunday morning, in company with Mr. James 
Fisher, I saw the President at church. He was 
accompanied by Mrs. Wilson. Rev. James H. 
Taylor, the minister, preached on ' ' The Prepa- 
ration for a Great Task," a sermon full of im- 
plied allusion to the present emergency. As 
I listened to this minister preaching in the 
presence of the first magistrate I could not help 
contrasting the scene mentally with that of, say, 
Bossuet preaching in the presence of Louis 
XIV. The two scenes offer what might be 
taken as an emblem of the advance of popular 
government. This man, sitting among us, as it 
were, one of us, not many days ago signed the 
declaration of a state of war against Germany. 
He is the point of the pyramid of American 
democracy, the leader of the new phalanx that 
is girding itself for a trial of strength with 
autocracy. 



X 

SENATOE LODGE : COMPLIMENTS TO CANADA 

Washington, D. C, May 1st. 
"V/TET La Follette this evening in tlie ro- 
-^ ■*■ tunda of the Ebbitt house. He is not an 
impressive looking man, seen at short range. 
When I told him I was representing the Free 
Press he introduced me to his secretary and to a 
military man, who were with him. I said, "I 
can't tell you that you are exactly popular in 
Canada to-day — ^but then you were not think- 
ing of a Canadian constituency." He replied, 
"No, I was trying to give some help to some 
of the people down this way." He invited me 
to call on him up at the capitol. Runciman, 
the manager of the hotel, by the way, is a cousin 
of Walter Runciman, president of the Board of 
Education and later of the Board of Trade in 
the Asquith government. 

To-night as I walked past the Franklin Mac- 
Veagh house on 16th street, now occupied by 
Third Assistant Secretary of State Brecken- 
ridge Long, which has been placed at the dis- 
posal of Mr. Balfour, the guards had just in- 
tercepted what they regarded as a suspicious 

70 



AMERICAATWAR 71 

character. Under a strong light they were sub- 
jecting him to a close examination, shaking his 
sleeves and trousers legs and otherwise run- 
ning carefully over his person. Precautions 
have evidently not ended with the trip across 
the high seas. The interest in Mr. Balfour's 
visit is very great. 

Armed with an introduction from the Brit- 
ish Ambassador I had a gratifying conversation 
this forenoon with Senator Lodge. I said Ca- 
nadians were much pleased with his attitude 
respecting the war. ''Well I've been fighting 
for the Allies here during the last two and a 
half years, and now we are in." I had a point 
of approach with the dean of the Senate and 
easily its most distinguished member because I 
had heard in January, 1911, his famous address 
in the Symphony Hall, Boston. I have already 
in this correspondence characterised that speech 
as the ablest political address I have ever heard. 
I have never forgotten certain isolated sen- 
tences of it. "My public service is all public. 
There is not a page of my political record 
that I am not prepared to have my grandchil- 
dren see. ... I love the old Bay state. I know 
every inch of her soil, and every page of her 
history. My ancestors lie in Sussex grave- 
yards, on Boston Common, and beneath the 
shadow of Park Street church." As I was 
quoting the senator's sentences I hesitated when 



72 AMERICAATWAR 

I came to one point and asked, ''Was it 'in 
Plymouth graveyards'?" "No, Sussex and 
Boston Common," he answered. When I re- 
ferred to the use senators had made Saturday 
afternoon of Canadian experience as justify- 
ing the volunteer system as against compulsory 
service, Mr. Lodge said: "You see the per- 
formance of the Canadians has heen so mag- 
nificent that everybody here is anxious to cite 
them." He pointed out that party lines are 
being pushed into the background in both Cham- 
bers. He instanced the vote of the Senate Mili- 
tary committee in reporting favourably on the 
President's scheme for raising an army. The 
vote was 10 to 7 in favour. Of the ten sup- 
porting, five were Republican and five Demo- 
cratic. Of the seven against only two were Re- 
publican while five were Democratic. 

After calling on the Secretary of State this 
morning and after being taken by him to the 
White House, Mr. Balfour came to the capitol 
and was received by Vice-President Marshall. 
In the Vice-President's room I noticed three 
justices of the supreme court. Holmes, Pitney 
and Day. Mr. Balfour was slightly detained, 
however, and the three justices were obliged to 
leave for the sitting of the court at 12:00 
sharp. Mr. Balfour came accompanied by 
Assistant Secretary of State Phillips and by 
Mr. Gibson, who has been assigned by Presi- 



AMERICA AT WAR 73 

dent Wilson to the British Commissioner as 
aide. The corridors adjacent to the Vice-Presi- 
dent's room were studded with police and se- 
cret service men. Two competent looking Scot- 
land Yard detectives stood close to the open 
door of Mr. Marshall's room. On the balcony 
outside the open window, before which Mr. Bal- 
four sat, two policemen paced. Mr. Balfour 
towers in stature well above all the American 
officials that I have yet seen him close to. He 
carries with him an atmosphere of gracious 
courtesy that arouses the most favourable com- 
ment. 

The second day of the Army bill debate in 
the senate brought out two ratthng speeches 
in support of the administration plan of selec- 
tive drafts, one by Weeks, of Massachusetts, 
and the other by Wadsworth, of New York. 

"Weeks contended that the corollary of pro- 
tection extended to nationals in all quarters of 
the globe is the universal obligation of military 
service. Justifying ages proposed in the Presi- 
dent's selective draft system — 19 — 25 — he said 
only 40,000 out of 2,600,000 in the northern arm- 
ies in the Civil War were about 25. He quoted 
Jaures, the French Socialist, as saying that 
voluntary military service in Prance would be 
as unjustifiable as voluntary taxation. He re- 
ported three hundred mayors of cities in all 
parts of the United States totalling nineteen 



74 AMERICA AT WAR 

millions of population as signing a statement 
favouring universal military service. 

Wadsworth, of New York, a fine brainy, 
spirited type of man, with whom I had a con- 
versation on Saturday afternoon, and who 
spoke to-day with admirable control of his sub- 
ject, said America must build for great events. 
Her navy is ready, but in the case of the army 
she must practically begin de novo. A Repub- 
lican he supported the administration plan to 
the hilt. Challenged by interruptors to show 
why the voluntary system should not first be 
tried now since Lincoln called for volun- 
teers in 1861, he pointed out that, thanks largely 
to the British navy, America is not in peril to- 
day as in 1861. If volunteers had not been got 
with a rush then, Washington would have fallen 
to the Virginians. The immunity secured for 
America by the British sea forces enables the 
United States, and should lead her, to build a 
scientific army that can stay in this war to the 
very last. An army built on scientific princi- 
ples, as provided by the Selective Conscription 
plan, will be proof of the intention of America 
to remain in to the bitter end. 



XI 



RED-HOT AEMY DEBATE IN THE HOUSE OF 

REPEESBNTATIVES 

Washington, D. C, May 2nd. 
rp 0-DAY, Wednesday, I listened for four 
-*■ hours to a red-hot debate in the House of 
Eepresentatives on the Army bill. The House 
has a straining, fiery air about it that com- 
pletely differentiates it from the graver Senate. 
The personnel of the house is a mirror of the 
polyglot population of the country. Italians, 
Germans, Jews, Irish, mingle with the repre- 
sentatives of the native American population. 
Cannon sits, deacon-like in looks, in the midst 
of this House consisting for the most part of 
men of a younger generation, which has shot 
away from him and over which, I imagine, he 
exerts little influence. Perhaps it would be 
well for me briefly to summarise the Adminis- 
tration's army plans. The regular army of the 
United States consisted on April 1, of 105,000 
men. Since that date enlistments total 25,000. 
It now stands, therefore, at 130,000. The Army 
Staff bill proposes the expansion of this force 
to 270,000 by voluntary enlistment. Should 

75 



76 AMERICA AT WAR 

this, however, not proceed rapidly enough, the 
bill authorises the President in the exercise of 
his judgment to use the drafting power. The 
National Guard, as the State forces are known, 
and for whose nationalisation provision is 
made, is similarly to be swelled to 330,000. 
Here again, if voluntary enlistment does not 
proceed fast enough, the president may apply 
the draft. In the next place the bill provides 
for a compulsory registration of all men be- 
tween the ages of 19 and 25. 

The selection of these ages is one of the 
grounds of attack upon the bill, but the admin- 
istration spokesmen would seem to have their 
opponents outargued. In the first place there 
is the recognised experience of the present war 
that the wastage increases by leaps and bounds 
as the age of the soldier mounts. To meet the 
claim that the age of 25 should be transcended 
there are the figures cited by Weeks in the sen- 
ate that in the Northern armies of the Civil 
War, there were out of 2,600,000 men only 40,- 
000 above 25. And military service to-day, 
much more imperatively than in the '60 's, calls 
for young men. On the other hand, to offset the 
attack of those who claim that the ages pro- 
posed mean the unjustifiable and unprecedented 
sacrifice of the youth of the country, there are 
the official fignires read into the senate record 
by Knute Wilson, a veteran of the Civil War, 



AMERICA AT WAR 77 

showing that in that struggle the North had 
840,000 men of the age of 17, and 1,580,000 men 
of the age of 18. 

To revert to the Executive's plan of a com- 
pulsory enrollment of all men between the ages 
of 19 and 25. It is expected that this will dis- 
close an available supply of 7,000,000 men. Of 
these 40 per cent, may be rejected for physical 
reasons or exempted for causes specified in the 
bill. The remaining 60 per cent, are to be 
drafted by lot in units of 500,000 each as they 
may be required. 

The Senate Military committee has reported 
favourably on the bill, and all comments point 
to the safe passage of the measure in that Cham- 
ber. In the House a much bitterer struggle is 
proceeding. Here the Military committee has 
reported adversely. The majority reports* 
favouring an initial trial of the volunteer sys- 
tem, but empowering the President at his dis- 
cretion to apply the draft. This amounts to 
what is colloquially called ''passing the buck" 
to the President ; or, in other words, to throw- 
ing the responsibility for compulsion on him. 
The chances have hitherto been that the bill 
would not pass the House, but the temperature 
is rapidly changing. A careful student of the 
House told me to-day that two weeks ago the 
bill undoubtedly would not have passed; but 
that it will when the pressure, of which Wilson 



78 AMERICA AT WAR 

is such an admitted master, has been applied. 
''They'll wilt when he really gets to work." 
Champ Clark, by the way, Speaker of the 
House, evidently angered by the presentation 
to him of 1,000,000 signatures favouring com- 
pulsion, on Tuesday blazed out saying, "Con- 
scription will never pass the house." 

Judge Harrison, representing Thomas Jeffer- 
son's county in Virginia, said in to-day's de- 
bates, social ostracism operates unfairly in vol- 
unteer system. Far better, enroll all, leaving 
registered men calmly to await call of the na- 
tion when it has prepared itself properly — ^in 
Wadsworth's word, scientifically — to take care 
of him as a soldier. Harrison quoted Jefferson 
effectively as favouring compulsory service as 
the true method of democracy. 

William Gordon, representing a congres- 
sional district in the west side of Cleveland, 
Ohio, flooded with Germans, an alleged Pacifist 
and certainly an anti-conscriptionist, made a 
violent attack on the administration measure. 
If he is a Pacifist he was to-day afraid to avow 
his colours, for he said: "We won't delay get- 
ting an army for a minute by refusing to sup- 
port conscription. We'll get a better one." 
With regard to the charge that a volunteer 
army would be a mob, he said: "They call 
Kitchener's army a mob. Well, Kitchener's 
mob is winning the war." By the way, alluding 



AMERICAATWAR 79 

to the topsy-turvey character of a hastily im- 
provised volunteer force, Grreen, of Vermont, 
interjected a telling quotation from Falstaff: 
''See to it that we fight not on a hot day, for, by 
the Lord, I take but one shirt with me." Into 
another anti-conscription speech a congress- 
man who is an Italian barber of New York, in- 
terjected a vigorous plea for conscription. 
Think of the national significance of that. 

These two interpolations illustrate the im- 
pression of notable vitality produced by the 
lower House. It is unruly and, in a way, un- 
kempt. But it has the air of coming boiling 
hot from the heart of a mighty people. There 
is evidently a group of men in the House who 
have pretty nearly boxed the compass on the 
question of the war; or perhaps it would be 
more accurate to say, they have made a series 
of strategic retreats. First they are alleged 
to have been Pro-German; then they wanted to 
instruct their countrymen to keep off the boats 
of the allies; now they are opposing enforced 
national service. 

Caldwell, of New York, member of a firm of 
lawyers with the style of ''Caldwell and Mur- 
phy," presumably an Irishman, said: "This 
is not a day for dissension, but for action. The 
silence from the Russian front seems to indi- 
cate that the United States may have to take 
the place of Russia in fighting the Kaiser. I 



80 AMERICAATWAR 

follow the President because I am prepared to 
believe tbat that calm, farsighted man under- 
stands the situation, and believes the prospects 
of the war require an army of the character 
contemplated by the plan of the General Staff." 

Anthony, Kansas, Eepublican, supporting the 
committee's majority amendment, said: ''Con- 
scription means delay. Volunteer plan will 
produce an army more quickly. Thirty days 
will summon a volunteer force of 500,000 men. 
Conscription will take six months to turn out 
that number." 

Lenroot, Wisconsin, reported as having in 
the past been a devoted coadjutor of La Fol- 
lette, supported the President's plan very ably. 
In passing I may say that La FoUette's stock 
seems very low to-day. I have no wish to play 
fast and loose with reputations; but one can- 
not watch things closely here without seeing 
that, for men who have had national standing. 
La FoUette and Bryan are to-day negligible 
factors. The former wholly, the latter rela- 
tively, so. 

I do not think that any Canadian reader can 
examine the picture I have tried to give here 
without concluding that this Army bill debate, 
at once in the stormy popular Chamber and in 
the more sedate Senate — ^with accompaniments 
in both instances of crowded galleries and a 
press pounding almost wholly one way — is 



AMERICAATWAR 81 

proving when all is said and done a salutary and 
vital process in which the vast elements of 
population of this country are being digested 
and co-ordinated in the direction of a great Na- 
tional Idea. 

Ed. Note.— The despatches from Washington 
m to-day's issue vindicate Prof. Osborne's pre- 
diction that, when the time came to vote, Con- 
gress would declare for selective conscription. 
On Saturday the House of Representatives 
voted in favour of the proposition 315 to 89; 
while in the senate it was 81 for and 8 against! 
— Ed. Free Press. 



XII 



BALFOUE AND JOFPBE 



Washington, D. C, May 3rd. 
"lyrE. BALFOUR accorded a "collective" in- 
^ ^ terview, 25 minutes in length, to repre- 
sentatives of the press this (Thursday) morn- 
ing. Fully sixty journalists assembled to hear 
the great envoy. The interview was prefaced 
by a brief address from Butler, press interme- 
diary, in which he warned the newspapermen 
of the greatness of the interests involved and 
of the absolute necessity of caution on their 
part. The commission was evidently somewhat 
alarmed by the tone of some of the morning's 
reports of General Bridge's conference yester- 
day. It had been made, inadvertently no doubt, 
to bear too directly on the pending conscrip- 
tion discussion here. If the greatest restraint 
was not practiced by the press, the intimacy of 
discussions with representatives of it would 
inevitably be lessened. The commission is here 
to exhibit frankly British experience in the war, 
but not to admonish the American authorities 
or people. 
As Mr. Balfour entered, and while he* spoke, 

82 



AMERICA AT WAR 83 

I was struck with his growing resemblance as 
he becomes older to his uncle, the Marquis of 
Salisbury. His domelike head is like his 
uncle's; and his slightly increased stoutness, 
with a little puffiness beneath the eyes, lessens 
the impression of mobility and lends him a 
touch of the phlegmatic, which, while by no 
means pronounced, increases the resemblance 
to which I have alluded. He spoke with ex- 
treme quietness and deliberation. All present 
were plainly impressed by the note of deep 
feeling that pervaded Mr. Balfour's remarks 
as he spoke of the tragedy of the war. 

Not being sure how complete a version of this 
address will have reached western Canadian 
readers, I shall give a fairly complete account 
of it. It was admirably phrased, and if there 
are any defects in my summary, the faults will 
be mine, as there were none in the original. 

Mr. Balfour said the British commission was 
fully sensible of the kindness, the enthusiasm, 
the warmth of the welcome its members had re- 
ceived from the great American people. This 
outward manifestation was the expression, he 
was persuaded, of a real cordiality of senti- 
ment. It was clear that the American people 
was determined to throw itself with heartiness 
into the greatest struggle ever waged. He was 
conscious of a great change of conditions in 
passing from England to America. On Sunday 



84 AMERICA AT WAR 

evening after dark he had gone out for a walk. 
He was aware of a feeling that at first he had 
not analysed. At last he realised that his 
strange feeling was due to the fact that this 
was the first time in two and a half years that 
he had seen a properly lighted street. The 
tragic consciousness of the war was always 
present with them. He had just learned that 
the son of Mr. Bonar Law was missing. This 
reminded him that of men of cabinet rank at 
the outbreak of the war, one had been killed in 
action and four had lost sons. Now the chan- 
cellor of the exchequer's son was wounded and 
missing in Palestine. 

France, said Mr. Balfour, was even more full 
than Britain of suffering and sorrow. The 
French mission was to arrive to-day. One of 
these, Marshal Joffre, will go down to all time 
as the successful general of the allied forces in 
the Battle of the Marne, the most decisive bat- 
tle in history. The magnitude of the assistance 
to be received by the allies from America can- 
not be exaggerated. He was almost amused to 
know that in some quarters it was supposed 
that the object of the mission was to inveigle 
the United States into a departure from her 
traditional policy and into entangling alliances. 
Such suppositions were wholly unfounded. The 
confidence of the allies in America was not 
based on such things as formal treaties,. public 



AMERICA AT WAR 85 

or private. No treaty could reinforce the con- 
fidence felt by the allies that the United States 
will see the war through. The commission was 
sure that the American people believe this to 
be no paltry or vulgar quarrel, due to lust for 
territory on the part of any of the allies. The 
liberty of the world is in issue. There never 
was any doubt where America would stand 
when that was realised. 

The instant Mr. Balfour finished his remarks, 
a slightly '^fussed," startled look seemed to 
pass over his face as if he feared that, his 
speech being concluded, the cohorts of the 
pouncing gentlemen of the Fourth Estate would 
let themselves loose on him in questions. Need- 
less to say, the deference created by the visi- 
tor's distinguished personality procured him a 
complete immunity. 

Balfour at close range and the victor of the 
Marne in one forenoon ! 

The arrival of Joffre had been announced 
for 12 : 30. The Mayflower, however, bearing 
the French party, was opposite her landing 
place at 12 : 05. From the time she came op- 
posite us, it took her at least twenty minutes to 
sidle in to the dock. 

Among the personages forming a line along 
the rail of the President's yacht were Roose- 
velt, the assistant secretary of the navy, Jus- 
serand, the French ambassador j Joffre himself, 



86 AMERICAATWAR 

and Viviani, minister of justice. A member of 
the party, included with special felicity, was the 
Marquis de Chambrun, great-grandson of La- 
fayette. On the landing stage, in the fore- 
ground, were Lansing, secretary of state ; Phil- 
lips, assistant secretary of state, and Harts, the 
President's military aid. Close at hand stood a 
large group from the French embassy. The 
same two troops of cavalry that attended Mr. 
Balfour on Sunday were drawn up in the back- 
ground, supplemented by detachments of ma- 
rines, considered the finest forces of the Re- 
public. 

The first of the receiving party to go on 
board was Lansing, closely followed by Phil- 
lips and Harts. Perhaps ten minutes was oc- 
cupied by presentations, and then the debarka- 
tion took place. Lansing and Viviani, repre- 
senting the civil power, came first, though, as 
I do not need to say, Joffre was the cynosure 
of all eyes. He looked the embodiment of 
quietly jolly strength. A figure of great weight 
and girth. A face of extreme kindliness. Not 
a suggestion of weakness such as might be due 
to age or fatigue. In fact, the great soldier 
looked the pink of health and strength. 

The first troop of cavalry led away. The 
automobiles filled and rolled off. The second 
troop of cavalry fell in. As the procession 
moved along the roadways of the navy, yard 



AMERICAATWAR 87 

the windows of the buildings were filled with 
employees, breaking constantly into cheers. 
Joffre was kept saluting all the time. At the 
entrance to the navy yard a great crowd waited, 
and I understand that the streets all the way to 
the capitol, and thereafter, were lined. 



XIII 

CHAMP CLAEK THKOWS DOWN THE GAUNTLET TO 
WILSON 

Washington, D, C, May 4th. 
T MENTIONED in my last letter that Champ 
-*• Clark was expected to oppose immediate 
conscription. Hardly had I finished writing 
when, stepping to the door of the press gallery, 
I heard Dent say: ''I yield for as long as he 
may desire to the honourable gentleman from 
Missouri, the Speaker of the House. ' ' The visi- 
tors ' galleries were packed. The press seats 
filled up rapidly. Clark received a warm wel- 
come from the House, the entire membership 
rising. He is said to enjoy great popularity 
among both parties, one of the causes of this 
popularity being the unswerving impartiality 
of his rulings. As the sitting advanced I no- 
ticed a number of senators at the back of the 
House. When Clark had been speaking about 
fifteen minutes, Sir George Foster, Canada's 
Acting Premier, entered the Chamber in com- 
pany with Senator Kellogg, of Minnesota. The 
intervention of Clark in this momentous debate 
proved to be easily the most picturesque and 



AMERICAATWAR 89 

dramatic incident I have yet witnessed in either 
House. 

The Speaker's first words were: ''I don't 
want to be interrupted till I finish. At the end 
I'll answer any reasonable question that may 
be addressed to me. I know what I want to 
say, and I want to say it in a connected way." 
Without a particle of beating about the bush, 
he plunged into his subject. His prompt open- 
ing was very effective and served to illustrate 
his knowledge of the temper of the House. 
There was something big and elemental about 
the way he broke his opening ground. He took 
no pains to conceal the gravity of what he was 
doing in crossing swords with the Executive, 
who, of course, is the leader of his party. ' ' It 
is not pleasant to differ with the President — 
especially when the President is one you have 
helped to elect. ' ' He asserted his general loy- 
alty to his party chief. ''Farther than that I 
will not go, so help me Almighty God.'' "The 
President of the United States is the most pow- 
erful personage on earth, because he is the head 
of 100,000,000 free people. He has his function, 
and, so far as I have been able to see, he is not 
bashful about performing it. The members of 
this Congress similarly have their function. 
This is still a free country. Tyranny has not 
yet invaded the House of Eepresentatives. We 
have entered upon a great war. This house will 



90 AMERICAATWAR 

vote every dollar and make every effort needed 
to bring that war to a successful completion. 
There are no differences between us in this re- 
gard. What we differ in is, our view as to meth- 
ods. One side wants conscription, wants it right 
away, and will be satisfied with nothing else. 
That side wishes to drag patriotic men into the 
army by the collar. The other side wishes to 
give the voluntary system a chance first. I am 
unreservedly in favour of the volunteer amend- 
ment to the Army bill. ' ' There was no denying 
the effectiveness of this opening. 

At the risk of repetition, I remind the reader 
of this correspondence that the majority report 
of the Military committee provides for an at- 
tempt to recruit by voluntary methods the first 
unit of 500,000. This is in addition to the ex- 
pansion to war footing of the regular army and 
the state militia. The said report then author- 
ises the President, at any time when it appears 
necessary in his discretion, to apply the draft. 
The hostile view of this proposal is that it un- 
fairly sidesteps responsibility and throws the 
odium of conscription on the sole shoulders of 
the President. The favorable view is that it 
provides for the testing of voluntarism and 
gives genuine Americanism a chance. I con- 
fess that, basing my opinion on British and 
Canadian experience in the war, I incline to the 
scientific and systematic methods of the Presi- 



AMERICA AT WAR 91 

dent. At the same time there is no use blink- 
ing the fact that there are formidable consider- 
ations on the other side. There is for one thing 
the grand contention that the country is swarm- 
ing with adventurous spirits — ranchers, cow- 
boys, sportsmen, and what not — who are strain- 
ing at the leash to volunteer, who will need, 
so it is said, an absolute minimum of training, 
who will not be found by the draft, and who by 
the same token, will not consent to be con- 
scripted. 

I had a remarkable conversation last night 
with a widely-known General in the National 
Guard of Ohio. Clark's speech represented ex- 
actly his point of view. He is a dead shot. Has 
competed at Bisley and in France, winning all 
kinds of trophies. He has been in the state 
militia thirty-four years. He was military aide 
to McKinley and had charge in a military way 
of McKinley 's funeral. He has superintended 
the preparation of some of the finest shooting 
ranges in the country. He served in the Span- 
ish-American War. He is dead against the ad- 
ministration bill, and whole heartedly in favor 
of the Dent amendment. He believes conscript 
American soldiers will be poor stuff. He says 
the conscripted men in the Civil War almost all 
deserted or refused to face fire. He refuses to 
listen to the example of continental countries 
like France. Says that example is invalidated 



92 AMERICAATWAR 

here because the American spirit and American 
conditions are so different. ''They drink con- 
scription with their mother 's milk. We don 't. ' ' 
Then there is the contention that when it comes 
to the rnb drafting will be resisted. "Watch 
out for the country west of Pittsburgh." It 
cannot be gainsaid; these are formidable ob- 
jections. 

I met the General in the rotunda again to-day. 
I rallied him on having written Clark's speech, 
but he disclaimed responsibility. ''If he says 
what you say he said, he was expressing the real 
Americanism of this country." He then re- 
ferred to a conversation he had had a few mo- 
ments before with the manager of the Goodyear 
Rubber Tire company. "Which plan will give 
us quick action and results?" the General was 
asked. His answer was: "The volunteer plan 
will give us an army in 90 days." On the one 
hand, remember this man is keen to have the 
country get at the Germans. On the other side 
there are two things to be borne in mind: A 
militia man of this type is apt to be prejudiced 
against the regular army, and in the second 
place one cannot help being haunted by the fear 
that men like Champ Clark and the General to 
whom I am alluding, ignore too completely the 
enormous changes that have taken place, es- 
pecially since the Civil War, in fighting condi- 
tions. 



AMERICAATWAR 93 

"To make the men of Missouri fight in this 
war," said Champ Clark this afternoon, *'a 
draft is not needed. In Missouri a conscript is 
held little ditferent from a convict." "Let the 
men of my state fight together as Missouri men; 
wounded, their neighbours it will be who will 
give them first aid. Sick, it will be their own 
friends who will be beside them. Dead, it will 
be men who know them that will bury them." 
This may bespeak ignorance of the terrific and 
colossal conditions of modern fighting as it is 
now going on in Europe, but no one can deny 
that it constitutes a powerful appeal. 

This brings me to a point where I think I can 
with advantage analyse the appeal made with 
such undeniable power by Champ Clark this af- 
ternoon. He appealed, as I have just shown, to 
territorial pride. He prophesies that the drafted 
army will not preserve the identity of local 
units. "This is the secret of the great tradi- 
tions of the Scots Greys." I have tried to pay 
my full respect to the formidable effect of his 
address, so that I think I am now free to say 
that he showed great adroitness in his method 
of appeal. In the first place, it was throughout 
emotional, rather than argumentative. He ap- 
pealed to the pride of the House as against the 
Senate, which is alleged to be already chortling 
over the prospect of imposing its will on the 
lower Chamber. He appealed, at least by impli- 



94 AMERICAATWAR 

cation, to the House against executive pressure. 
He rallied the pride of the House as against su- 
percilious critics outside, who all thought they 
knew more than the people's representatives. 
He rang the changes on patriotic feeling, citing 
Washington and Grant as being hostile to con- 
scription. ''What was Washington after all? 
Oh, just a volunteer." Finally he appealed to 
national pride at large. *'I resent these slurs 
on the American volunteer in the name alike 
of the living and of the dead. I decline to be- 
lieve that the present generation of Americans 
are cowards. ' ' 

I should like very much to have space to ana- 
lyse his manner. Because, make no mistake 
about it, he is an Ajnerican product, representa- 
tive of certain broadly human American traits. 
His language is now quaint, now humorous, now 
almost frankly rough. As he spoke one coat 
sleeve crept halfway up his arm, but he paid no 
attention to it. Speaking of Roosevelt he said : 
' ' I rather like Roosevelt. One reason is because 
he knows a little about more things than any 
other man on earth." Summoned to speak 
louder at one point, he drawled : ' ' Why, I wasn 't 
talking at all then." Anent the newspaper 
propaganda for conscription he said: "I wish 
to the Lord the editors of the country could be 
put in the front line." ''Where is the man 
prepared to say the volunteers of the Civil War 



AMERICA AT WAR 95 

on both sides were not good fighting men? I'd 
like to see the colour of his hair, and the cut of 
his eye. ' ' Here evidently is a sort of legislative 
Mark Twain. Champ Clark has the air of a 
horse trader of a good type strayed into states- 
manship. He carries with him in some indefin- 
able way suggestions of the Mississippi tow- 
path. 

His close was tremendously effective. ''My 
one son is going into the army in whatever ca- 
pacity he can serve in. If he should fall, I wish 
the privilege of being able to carve upon his 
tomb: 'This man, a Missouri volunteer, died 
fighting for his country.' " 

I think the President's plan is the more scien- 
tific. In this respect it is in line with other 
legislation he has been instrumental in passing, 
such as that creating the Federal Reserve Bank- 
ing system. Whether it makes the mistake of 
bottling the country up, instead of releasing its 
enthusiasm, is a weighty and momentous ques- 
tion. But at any rate Champ Clark's was an 
extraordinary speech. It produced an extraor- 
dinary impression, and it may conceivably 
create a situation that it may take some time 
to compose. 



XIV 

A GEEMAF-BOEN" SXJPPOETER OF WILSON 

Washington, D. C, May 5th. 
rr^HE energising of American opinion, mak- 
-*■ ing sure determined participation in the 
war by the American people as a whole, goes 
forward magnificently. The air is full of dra- 
matic incidents, small and big, which are firing 
the imagination of the people. The following 
are tj^ical. As the French party, on board the 
Mayflower, ascended the Potomac, when the ves- 
sel came opposite Mount Vernon, Washington's 
home, the members of the Commission stood 
with heads uncovered. "When the ''Star Span- 
gled Banner" was played during the landing 
at the Navy Yard, the civil members of the Com- 
mission again doffed their hats, Joffre's hand 
rising to the salute. At a certain point in the 
party's progress through the streets to their 
Washington home, the leading members of the 
British Commission were awaiting them. Bal- 
four and his associates rose in the tonneau of 
their automobile, and, greeting their French 
confreres, were responded to in kind. Qn their 

96 



AMERICAATWAR 97 

arrival at the Henry D. White home, assigned 
to them, the French delegates found floral greet- 
ings awaiting them, sent by Mr. Balfour. The 
flowers were accompanied by the inscription: 
"Vive 1 'Alliance. Hommages aux Francais de 
la part de leur freres britanniques. " In the 
same sense is an incident, apocryphal or real, 
flashed this morning from England. Reaching 
Liverpool the captain of the U. S. ship Mon- 
golia reports the probable sinking of a German 
U-boat by his gunners. He adds that the shot 
which he thinks did the business was launched 
from a gun christened T. R. "So that Teddy 
fired the first shot in the war, after all. " Need- 
less to say Mr. Roosevelt voices his gratifica- 
tion. "I am glad somebody on our side is be- 
ginning to hit back. We have been too long 
on the receiving end of this war." "The re- 
ceiving end" is a flash of genius, and might 
easily become a slogan. 

The immense emotional potentiahties of Jof- 
fre's coming are already beginning to operate. 
It is suggested that he might well make a prog- 
ress across the continent to San Francisco. Be- 
yond question a transcontinental journey by 
him, if he found it possible to make such, would 
be hailed with acclaim. It might set on fire "in- 
terior America" in the interests of the war. 
The Atlantic httoral is in a condition of pretty 
complete spiritual preparedness. It only re- 



98 AMERICAATWAR 

mains to bring the interior of the country fully 
abreast. 

The opposition in the house to the President's 
Draft Bill appears to-night to be crumpling up. 
It was backed off the boards, so far as argument 
is concerned, to-day by the speech of Kahn, the 
Republican from California, who is handling 
the passage of the bill. To-day I looked Kahn 
up in the Congressional Directory and found 
that he was born in the Grand Duchy of Baden 
in 1861 and came to America in 1866. He is a 
solid man, evidently much respected in the 
house. In appearance he is a plumper edition 
of Sir John A. Macdonald. It was very impres- 
sive to see a man of German birth, a Republi- 
can, standing as chief sponsor for the Army Bill 
of a Democratic President. He struck more 
clearly than any one else that I have heard the 
note of gratitude to the Republic : * ' This glori- 
ous Republic under which the American citizen 
receives so many privileges. ' ' That is the real 
answer of American democracy to the Kaiser. 

Kahn's argument was irresistible and threw 
into clear relief the almost purely emotional 
appeal of the other side. He said he would 
never tolerate disparagement of the volunteers 
of the Republic who have on so many fields de- 
monstrated their valour. ''But I am opposed to 
the system that throws the whole burden on the 
shoulders of those who spontaneously respond 



AMERICA AT WAR 99 

to the need of the country. ' ' He then proceeded 
and simply shot holes in the system. I stop 
to say that I have been much impressed by the 
air of the House during this debate. There is, 
plainly, a large body of men unconunitted on 
the question, who are looking earnestly for 
light. It is this body that will decide the ques- 
tion, and, at the moment, it looks as if argument 
will win. 

I said that Kahn shot holes in the voluntary 
system. It had broken down at each crisis in 
the nation's history. In the war of the Revolu- 
tion Washington declared flatly for draft. 
Thomas Jefferson later did the same. In 1812 
hardly any troops came forward, under the 
volunteer system, from the extreme eastern 
States. In other words the various parts of the 
country did not share the burden equally. ' ' This 
Bill proposes to draw equivalent quotas from 
all parts of our territory." 

The figures that Kahn produced on the Civil 
War were an amazement to one not closely ac- 
quainted with American history. ''How did 
they get the volunteers of the Civil Warl" He 
then went on and showed that after the first 
rush was over fabulous sums had to be paid by 
the States in bounties. Massachusetts paid thus 
$22,000,000; Pennsylvania $43,000,000; New 
York $90,000,000. And so on all along the line. 



100 AMERICA AT WAR 

until the aggregate bounties paid by the States 
as such amounted to $289,900,000. Meantime the 
Federal Government paid in the same way 
$363,000,000. The two put together totalled 
$653,000,000. ''The States went into bidding 
for men against each other, and all against the 
Central Government" until the bounties rose as 
high as $1100 a head. Thereafter came the 
squalid story of bounty-brokers and bounty- 
jumpers. The bounty-jumper was the man who 
drew his bounty, then deserted, and started in 
for a new subvention. Kahn cited one man, 
ultimately sent to the penitentiary, who con- 
fessed that he had been paid bounties thirty-two» 
times. The Draft Bill of the '60 's permitted 
paying for substitutes. Wealthy men escaped, 
poor men had to go. The first levy under the 
draft of that day in the North called 300,000 
men; 80,000 of these escaped from service by 
substitution and commuting. The present bill, 
imposing compulsory service at the very start, 
will affix no stigma. The conscript of to-day 
will not have the rating of a convict. There will 
be no stigma. The last words I heard from 
Kahn, this sterling representative of what 
America has done for its foreigners, was: "In 
this hour of its stress the United States expects 
every man to do his duty." 

WTiatever may be the fate of this measure 



AMERICA AT WAR 101 

of the President (so far as voting is concerned), 
this German-bom citizen of the United States 
proved to-day to the hilt that it has the weight 
of argument on its side. 



XV 



INTERVIEW WITH HOVELAQTJE^ INTELLECTUAL REP- 
EESENTATIVE OP FRANCE 

Washington, D. C, May 5th. 

SCENE : Spacious apartment of the mansion 
of Henry D. White, a few stone throws 
away from the house occupied by the British 
Mission. In the centre of the room a large ta- 
ble such as diplomats might gather about. A 
military man, evidently a secretary, writing, 
smoking, paying no attention to us. Suddenly 
a tall, swarthy, black-bearded man enters, and 
the company rises to receive him. It is M. Ho- 
velaque, described to me the other day during 
the landing of the party, as the intellectual 
interpreter of France, designated in that ca- 
pacity to accompany the delegation. He speaks 
English with regal ease, as if to the manner 
born, and is evidently a thoroughly accom- 
plished man. 

M. Hovelaque began by saying that in their 
original intention they had come just for a brief 
stay of ten or twelve days, simply to ''salute" 
the American government and people. It was 
now clear that the government of the United 

102 



AMERICA AT WAR 103 

States wishes to concert specific measures for 
practical collaboration. Under these circum- 
stances the stay of the Commission is likely to 
be considerably prolonged. The Commission 
was much struck with the difference in the con- 
ditions obtaining here, as contrasted with those 
of France, after more than thirty months of 
fighting. '^ Everything to-day in France is 
grimy and war-worn." 

A number of amusing and gratifying inci- 
dents had occurred since their arrival in "Wash- 
ington. Wlien M. Viviani had visited Mr. Mar- 
shall at the Capitol, the Vice-President had 
said: "The ambition of my life is to shake 
hands with Joffre on the floor of the Senate. I 
have been a pacifist, and never wished that I 
had had the opportunity of seeing Caesar or 
Napoleon;, but I do wish to see Joffre, the 
Charles Martel of modem France. Charles 
Martel hammered the Mussulmans, and Joffre 
has hammered the Huns." 

M. Hovelaque gave us vivid pictures of the 
members of the Mission. Marshal Joffre was 
born in the far south of France, but there is 
apparently nothing or little of the meridional 
about him. The men of the South are dark : he 
is fair. They are for the most part voluble 
and mercurial: he is reticent, equable, well- 
poised. "WTiat a tower of strength he has 
been to France in these cruel days! What an 



104 AMERICAATWAR 

immovable rock, placing itself in the path of a 
torrent! Perfect balance is his chief charac- 
teristic, if one except the kindness which has 
made him the 'father' of our soldiers." 

M. Viviani is a sensitive man who abominates 
personal publicity. He wishes to let it be known 
that it is France, not so many individuals, that 
is here. The French Minister of Justice, Pre- 
mier at the outbreak of the war, lost his beloved 
son early in the struggle. ''No one knows where 
he lies." M. Viviani is a man of the people, 
not so much in origin as in spirit. Politically 
a Socialist, he prevented strikes on the rail- 
roads in the early days of the war by personal 
appeals to the men. M. Hovelaque alluded in 
the most glowing terms to Jaures. He was one 
of the greatest statesmen of France. Perhaps 
her greatest orator since Gambetta. "Jaures 
was my close personal friend. I know he would 
have been heart and soul in this war. ' ' In the 
opening days he was foully murdered. The peo- 
ple were bewildered. They thought he might 
have been murdered because he was a pacifist. 
M. Viviani calmed the popular suspicion by a 
proclamation addressed to the people. 

One of the members of the party is Colonel 
Fabrey, ' ' the dare-devil of France. " "He hops 
about now on a beautifully made wooden leg 
— ^made in America." With 1,600 men, at a 
critical moment in the war, he held the most 



AMERICA AT WAR '105 

difficult point on the Yser. For days and days 
lie and Ms men stood on guard behind a parapet 
built literally of dead Germans. ''Whenever 
the bodies became too offensive, he and his 
men threw out hooks on the end of long ropes, 
and pulled in newly-dead Germans. At last his 
dearest friend fell by his side. The only place 
to bury him was beneath his own feet. For a 
week he was separated from the remains of his 
comrade only by six inches of soil directly un- 
der his own feet. The soil there is terrible 
stuff and a foot down you come to water." 

"It goes without saying," went on M. Hove- 
laque, ' ' that the allied resources are all pooled. 
What is done for England, is done for us. What 
is done for France, is done for England." 

The German submarines make a dead set on 
ships bearing (1) wheat, (2) steel, (3) coal, (4) 
oil. Their knowledge is prodigious. 

Asked about the probable conditions of Ger- 
many itself in the matter of food, he made this 
extremely interesting classification. * ' Germany 
consists to-day of these groups: (a) She has 
approximately 20 million men in arms and in 
services directly connected therewith. These 
are probably well-fed; (b) there are 20 million 
peasant folk, living on the soil and subsisting 
on produce they are able to hoard. These are 
getting on tolerably well yet; (c) there are 7 or 
8 millions of the rich — able to get food at a 



106 AMERICA AT WAR 

heavy cost, sometimes rumiing over to Holland 
for a really big meal; (d) there are 20 million 
people on the edge of starvation. It is by these 
the rioting is being done." How are the Ger- 
mans doing for clothing? *'I salute the Ger- 
mans for their ingenuity. They have learned 
how to make fibre out of nettles. They are 
making cloth out of paper." 

I think all will agree that this accomplished 
Frenchman gave us vivid glimpses of the war. 



XVI 

THE EELATION" OF AMEEICA TO THE OEPHANS AND 
UNIVEESITIES OF FEANCE 

Washington, D. C, May 6tK 
npO-NIGHT at the National Press Club, I 
"^ sat at a table next one at which the fa- 
mous *'Joe" Cannon was taking his dinner. 
This remarkable man, who is described to me 
as being universally liked in the House, but who, 
I imagine, has ceased to exert any large po- 
litical influence, has sat in twenty-one con- 
gresses. In other words, the close of the pres- 
ent congress will give him a record of forty-two 
years. He is eighty-one years of age. His next 
junior has sat in thirteen congresses; so that 
Cannon is easily the ranking man in point of 
length of service. Champ Clark comes about 
third in seniority in the lower chamber. I find 
that Dallinger, of New Hampshire, outpoints 
Lodge by two years in the senate. Dallinger 
entered in 1891, Lodge in 1893. 

The passage of the Selective Draft Army bill 
by both branches of Congress signalises for one 
thing a great victory for Wilson and the Gen- 
eral Staff, and for another a remarkably quick 

107 



108 AMERICA AT WAR 

ripening of public opinion as to national obliga- 
tion. War and the army are on every lip. There 
is universally evident the desire to know ''what 
we can do quickly and effectively to help. " Yes- 
terday on Pennsylvania avenue a man, much the 
worse for liquor, was walking near me. Pre- 
liminary voting had already shown that the 
draft plan was going to pass. The man was 
talking animatedly to himself. "No more rich 
man — poor man. No substitutes this time-. 
We Ve put an end to that. ' ' On questioning him 
I found that he was an old Civil War man, and 
through his mind were running recollections of 
the way the haphazard volunteer system had 
worked in the old days. As I entered the hotel 
a few minutes afterward I heard an elderly man 
say to the clerk : ' ' The thing that I like about 
this draft business is that it will make Tom, 
Dick and Harry help George." "Let George 
do it" won't work under Wilson's sensible and 
scientific plan, which by its system of successive 
units or increments at once capitalises British 
e:xperience in this war and offers the only way 
by which the United States can move effectively 
from her present small army to as big a one 
as the situation may require. 

I think it would be regrettable if I had not 
an opportunity to give the readers of this cor- 
respondence a summary of our second confer- 
ence with M. Hovelaque. This man is .admir- 



AMERICA AT WAR 109 

ably fitted for his role of interpreting intellect- 
ual France to America. Anent his English, 
which is simply magnificent, I asked him if he 
had spent much time in England. ''No, but 
when I was a child, I had an English gover- 
ness." For the rest he is married to an Ameri- 
can wife, the daughter of former Governor Hig- 
gins, of New York State. Both Missions are 
well sprinkled with men who have had Ameri- 
can affiliations. The Marquis de Chambrun has 
an American wife. Butler, of the English 
party, is married to Miss Levering, of Phila- 
delphia, He has lectured at the University of 
Pennsylvania. "Was it in that connection you 
met Miss Levering?" an indefatigable Ameri- 
can pressman asked. * ' I 'm afraid it was, ' ' But- 
ler replied. 

Well, to come back to M. Hovelaque's sec- 
ond interview at the Shoreham. One of the 
greatest of the problems of France is that con- 
cerning her orphans. The birth-rate of France, 
as is well known, is low. The loss of children, 
particularly in tha early months of the war in 
the northeastern part of the country, was tre- 
mendous. Added to those who died from ex- 
posure and those who were actually killed, were 
the great numbers who succumbed to infantile 
cholera. The surviving orplians. Prance pro- 
poses to foster not only physically, but morally 
and spiritually. They are to be made the in- 



110 AMERICAAT WAR 

dustrial, intellectual and spiritual wards of tlie 
nation. ^'Not of the State, which may change 
in its character from time to time, but of the 
nation in the highest sense." An attempt is 
to be made to endow them in such a way that 
they may be reared by their own mothers, where 
these survive. A council for their supervision 
is to be created ''consisting of representatives 
of everything that is most eminent in France." 
For instance, those that are the children of par- 
ents who belonged to the agricultural popula- 
tion, are not simply going to be trained as farm- 
ers, but, by special methods, with a view to their 
becoming agricultural leaders. 

M. Hovelaque then passed to the intellectual 
relations of France and America as affected 
by the war. The universities of the two coun- 
tries have not been sufficiently in touch. Ameri- 
can universities have been profoundly influ- 
enced by German methods. The curse of Ger- 
man kultur is that it is devoid of the broad 
human spirit. This broad human spirit on 
the other hand is the grand characteristic of 
France. So it was at the time of the Revolu- 
tion, before that event, through anarchy, ' ' tailed 
off," to use Mr. Hovelaque 's own expression, 
into Napoleonism. The French revolutionists 
originally went out ' ' not to annex territory but 
to free men. ' ' Some one has said : ' ' Every man 
has two countries: his own and France." An 



AMERICA AT WAR 111 

attempt will be made to provide facilities 
whereby students from this continent can read- 
ily get access to the French universities. Bur- 
saries for this purpose are needed. All sorts 
of old traditional habits in the French univer- 
sities must be swept away, so as to make pos- 
sible degrees for American students. There 
should be a cultural alliance between America 
and France. (As I pointed out in a despatch 
to the Free Press, I expressed to M. Hovelaque 
the hope that we in Canada might be brought 
into this plan.) M. Hovelaque strongly em- 
phasized the spiritual and humane element in 
French culture as contrasted with German ma- 
terialism. 

M. Hovelaque added an interesting postcript, 
so to say, on the surprises of the war. Every 
day sees an alteration or rejuvenation of meth- 
ods. The method of one week is out of date the 
next. ''Every man who has been in this war 
feels out of it if he is away from the front two 
weeks." All of which throws into relief the 
folly of the opponents of the Draft plan in Con- 
gress, who appeal to the example of the Civil 
War fought fifty years ago. 

Butler, of the English Mission, followed M. 
Hovelaque. He recapitulated for us the English 
party's impressions of their first week in Amer- 
ica. One thing that struck them was the ** daz- 
zling swiftness of everything here." The ele- 



112 AMERICA AT WAR 

vators are an illustration. The ordinary Eng- 
lish elevator is very leisurely. There is a par- 
ticularly slow one in the London Foreign Office. 
^' Great Scott," broke out a young American 
riding in it, "we have trees in our country that 
grow faster than this lift travels." Butler 
smiled happily as he told this. 



XVII 

THE VICTOE OF THE MAKNE JOFFEE AT SHOET 

KANGE 

Washington, D. C, May 6th. 
T EEMEMBER how stirred I was, between 
^ fifteen and twenty years ago, in All Sadnts' 
Churcli, Winnipeg, wlien I heard Haweis, an 
English preacher, say, as he lifted a tiny hand 
made to look still more dainty by the lawn that 
encircled his wrist, ' ' This hand has clasped the 
hand of Victor Hugo." Well, -the unimportant 
hand that pens these words has grasped the 
hand of one greater than Victor Hugo. This 
morning in the White Mansion — the temporary 
home of the French delegation — I passed in file 
before Joffre, the deathless victor of the Mame. 
The Joffre address was prefaced by a brief 
statement from M. Hovelaque: "There is not 
a moment to be lost. This war must be waged 
intensively. The task cannot be approached too 
seriously. The losses will be terrific unless 
America takes all possible precautions to pre- 
pare in the most careful, and at the same time, 
the most rapid way. Wliat we are fighting for 
is a durable peace on democratic conditions." 

113 



114i AMERICA AT WAR 

Speaking of the approaclmig visit of both 
French and British Missions to Mount Vernon, 
he said: ''I cannot give you in advance the 
speeches to be pronounced by M. Viviani and 
Marshal Joff re. Viviani has said to me : ' No, I 
won't write that in cold blood. I want to speak 
when the emotion of the moment is upon me at 
that sacred spot. ' " M. Hovelaque told us that 
to-morrow Archbishop Ireland is to dine with 
M. Viviani. "M. Viviani wishes to meet lead- 
ers of all classes of opinion in America. ' ' 

Incidentally, I learnt this morning that in an 
earlier letter I misnamed Colonel Fabry the 
''Dare-Devil of France." He is known as the 
"Blue Devil of France," the allusion, in the 
matter of colour, being to his Alpine uniform. 

"The Marshal will now come in." As these 
words from M. Hovelaque were spoken, the 
doors swung open and in stepped, with his hand 
at the salute, the great French soldier. The 
room, crowded with one hundred journalists, 
broke into a cheer. I cannot do justice to the 
scene, and I shall just make a few jottings. Suf- 
fice it to say that you cannot imagine a face 
and manner of greater simplicity and candour 
than the face and manner of Joffre. I hope, for 
the sake of my French friends, that the editor 
will do me the favour of setting up in French the 
occasional sentences that I quote. The official 
statement afterwards given out at the State De- 



AMERICA AT WAR 115 

partment, which I have not seen, is reported to 
me as being comparatively colourless. I ex- 
pected that Joffre 's French would show perhaps 
marked traces of his southwestern origin, but 
such is not the case. At one or two points there 
was a broad pronunciation of words like **bat- 
tre" that reminded me of the French-Canadian 
accent. For the rest, his French is largely with- 
out special distinction. It is the simple laconic 
language of a man of action not of words. 

'* Je suis heureux d'etre capable de saluer en 
vous la grande presse americaine qui exerce une 
influence si grande. Je vais lire. Mes pensees 
sont bien nettes, et je veux les exprimer nette- 
ment. L'accueil que j'ai re§u me touche pro- 
fondement. Les soldats de la France meritent 
1 'affection de I'Amerique. L'attaque est au- 
jourd'hui plus forte que jamais. A cote de 
I'armee fran§aise se trouve I'armee britannique, 
dont je puis dire que la creation et le developpe- 
ment me remplit d 'admiration. (Beside the 
army of France stands the British army, whose 
creation and development fills me with admira- 
tion.) Sur le sol frangais il y a place pour 
I'armee des Etats-Unis. L'Allemagne redoute 
cette eventualite. L'armee frangaise accueillera 
I'armee americaine a bras ouverts. (The French 
army will welcome the American army with 
open arms.) 

At the conclusion of his formal remarks M. 



116 AMERICA AT WAR 

Hovelaque said tlie Marshal would answer ques- 
tions, which would be translated for him. Ques- 
tion: ''Would it be wise to bring back Ameri- 
cans now fighting in France to train soldiers 
here?" To this, this great and simple man re- 
plied, consulting those about him : ' ' Nos besoins 
sont considerables ' ' — ' ' Our need is very great. ' ' 
It is indispensable that those already there stay 
there — with the exception, of course, of the occa- 
sional specialist who might be brought over. 
' ' Envoyez le drapeau americain tout de suite. ' ' 
— ''Send the American flag over as quickly as 
possible." The plan followed by the British 
authorities offers the model which America 
might naturally follow. Division after division 
as they are ready. "Ceci resulte du bon sens." 
— "This is the dictate of plain, common sense." 
Asked about the work of the women of France, 
as a model for American women in the war, the 
eyes of the good man and the great general 
glistened as he said : The message of the French 
women to their husbands, brothers, and lovers 
from the beginning of the war has been : "Nous 
vous soutiendrons toujours" — "We will sup- 
port you always." He then referred to the ap- 
proach of the first winter of the war. He had 
seen that his soldiers were without many neces- 
saries. "Je poussai un cri d'alarme." — "I 
sounded a signal of alarm." Instantly "les 



AMERICA AT WAR 117 

fenunes frangaises se sont mises a tricoter" — 
''The women started in to knit." 

Joffre was cheered to the echo as he with- 
drew. 



XVIII 

JOFFEE AND VrVIANI IN THE AMEEICAN SENATE 

Washington, D. C, May 7th. 
/^NE hears a great many smart things said 
^-^ here by all kinds of people. Last night 
Raymond Swing, correspondent of the Chicago 
News, who was in Germany from the outbreak 
of the war until last February, was speaking 
at the National Press Club. The chairman in- 
troducing him said that it was reported that 
Mr. Swing had been on one occasion aboard a 
boat plying in the Sea of Marmora when a Brit- 
ish submarine operating in those waters came 
alongside. The submarine hailed the boat with 
the question : ' ' "Who are you f ' ' Mr. Swing hur- 
ried to the stern and answered: ''Eaymond E. 
Swing of the Chicago News." The submarine 
at once disappeared in terror. Swing, begin- 
ning to speak and alluding to the picture he 
was to draw of internal German conditions, said 
that his first managing editor used to say when 
arguing: ''Facts or no facts, this is the truth." 
He begged leave to reverse that and put it: 
''Truth or no truth, these are the facts." He 
expected that the best the audience would say 

118 



AMERICA AT WAR 119 

of him would be: *'He lies like an eye-witness." 
Briefly let me cover a few of the points made 
by Mr. Swing. Thanks to Hindenburg's ap- 
peal, made when he replaced Von Falkenhayn, 
Germany is probably stronger in the field this 
season than ever before. This has been made 
possible by the mobilisation of civilians, and, in 
particular, by the mobilisation of one million 
women for subsidiary war purposes. Trans- 
portation is the weakest link in Germany's 
chain. Rolling stock on Germany's railroads 
has run down badly. When he left in February 
nearly all trains were arriving from one to four 
hours late. Germany would give more for two 
hundred American locomotives than for a con- 
signment of any other material. The backbone 
of the German designs is to be found in the 
Junkers. They are a hard-headed body of men 
intensely devoted to Prussia, and the most 
scientific obstructionists of democratic prog- 
ress to be found in the world. He had 
visited at a typical Junker estate in Meck- 
lenburg. His host had shown him family 
records disclosing the fact that fully one-half 
of the male members of his line had fallen in 
actual fighting at one time or another for 
Prussia. America would do well to attack the 
Junkers rather than the Emperor as such. 

The French delegation received a great wel- 
come in the Senate to-day. Again the corridors 



120 AMERICA AT WAR 

were studded with police and secret service men. 
The galleries were crowded. Lodge and Hitch- 
cock were deputed by the Vice-President to es- 
cort Joffre and Viviani into the Chamber. Ad- 
miral Chocheprat, Ambassador Jusserand, and 
M. Hovelaque occupied the Vice-President's 
dais with the two principals. In the applause 
that attended the entrance I noted that La Fol- 
lette joined without any appearance of reserve. 
The Vice-President said that the Senate "which 
had once received Lafayette, now, about a hun- 
dred years later, welcomes again great rep- 
resentatives of France." When the Senators, 
and a good many members of the House infor- 
mally present, had been presented to the visi- 
tors, a pretty incident occurred: the pages of 
the Senate — grading down from tall youths to 
tiny boys — ^passed before Joifre and Viviani, 
who shook hands with each. 

It had not been expected that there would 
be any speaking, but Vice-President Marshall 
called on Viviani. The French Minister of Jus- 
tice said: (Translation): 

*' Through us who are human and shall die, 
it is France that you see. I was deeply moved 
in crossing the threshold of this your House of 
Legislature and I ask myself what can be the 
thoughts of those autocrats in Germany if they 
stiU retain the faculty to think. The two na- 
tions of which we are the representatives will 



AMERICA AT WAR 121 

never rest until the security of democracy has 
been re-established [alluding to Wilson's phrase 
'to make the world safe for democracy']. We 
are united to get rid of the heavy oppression 
of absolutism." 

Vice-President Marshall essayed to close the 
function by using the words : '' As we said Hail, 
so now we say Farewell, and yet again, Please 
God, Hail!" The party was leaving the ros- 
trum, but the Chamber and galleries broke into 
an ovation to Joffre, who was called upon in- 
sistently. When the Marshal succeeded in 
making himself heard, he simply said: ''I — do 
— not — speak — English. Vivent les Etats- 
Unis." 

When the session resumed La Follette, who 
is excoriated unanimously by the men in the 
press gallery as a publicity hunter of the first 
order, spoke to depleted Chamber and galleries 
on his amendment for the submission of the 
Draft Army Bill to a referendum. He spoke 
vigorously and with passion, but with no air 
of commanding any section worth while either 
of the Senate or of public opinion. Lincoln, he 
said, had resorted to the Draft only in the third 
year of the Civil War. ' ' Canada has not even 
considered conscription. Australia has rejected 
it by popular vote. And yet the America of 
to-day, thirty days after the Declaration of 
War, adopts the Draft." 



XIX 

SPEEDING-UP OF AMEEICAN PKODUCTION" FOB WAB- 
TIME 

(First Article) 

Washington, D. C, May 8th. 
T TOOK dinner to-niglit at the National Press 
■*■ Club with Blair, of the Associated Press, 
who has lived twenty-four years in Germany, 
and who came out with Gerard, the American 
Ambassador. He says his impressions coincide 
substantially with those given by Spring, which 
I have referred to in an earlier letter. His 
party traversed France by rail, entered Spain, 
and sailed for the United States from Corunna ! 
He says Britain is far the worst hated of the 
allies in Germany. Reason : the Germans recog- 
nise that she has become the predominant mem- 
ber of the Entente alliance, and that the con- 
tinuance of the war is due to her persistence. 
My General is happy to-night. The Senate 
amended the Army bill by providing for the 
prompt despatch of four infantry divisions — 
about 120,000 men, the General says — to France. 
The bill now goes to conference between the 

122 



AMERICA AT WAR 123 

Chambers, and to-night it is mmonred that the 
House conferees are showing a disposition to 
accept the Senate amendment. The newspapers 
to-day also indicate that the White House is 
considering yielding to the popular demand that 
an expeditionary force be sent without delay 
to French soil. If this policy is decided upon 
great and honest old Joffre will have had a good 
deal to do with it. He has not disguised the 
eagerness of his desire that the Stars and 
Stripes should be seen at the earliest possible 
moment in his native country. The General 
thinks that this will mean inevitably that Roose- 
velt will go. This last, however, is not to be 
banked upon till the man at the White House 
actually gives the word. The General having 
referred to the capable character of the men 
who would respond to a call from Roosevelt, 
I said : ' ' You think that with their present ex- 
perience they could learn the new fighting con- 
ditions on French soil within a very short 

time r ' ' ' By , they'd absorb the whole thing 

in five days. I'll be darned if they wouldn't in- 
spect the German trenches inside of forty-eight 
hours." 

On the wired instructions of the editor of the 
Free Press, I have endeavoured to see Secretary 
Houston, of the Department of Agriculture, as 
to measures being taken to accelerate food pro- 
duction in America. Like all the other depart- 



124 AMERICAATWAR 

ment heads, liowever, lie is up to the neck in 
work, and I have not been able to get through to 
him. To-day, however, I have attended the 
meetings of governors and state representa- 
tives with the Council of National Defence, and 
shall, consequently, be able to give here some 
of the material that I might have got from Sec- 
retary Houston. 

The morning meeting to-day was held in the 
office of the Secretary for War, who presided ; 
the afternoon session took place in the Munsey 
building. This morning the speakers were: 
Baker, Secretary for War; Daniels, Secretary 
for the Navy ; Lane, Secretary for the Interior ; 
McKane, Adjutant General, and Crowder, 
Judge Advocate General ; Scott, Chief of Staff, 
and the other members of the Council of Na- 
tional Defence were also present. 

The war secretary said the government was 
not relying on itself alone in this emergency. 
The best business brains in the country were 
being called to Washington. America is 'Hhe 
greatest undisturbed food producer in the 
world." She must now take the needs of her 
allies into consideration along with her own. 
He pleaded for the recognition of the demo- 
cratic character of the draft by which it is pro- 
posed to raise the bulk of the new army. Se- 
lection of men to be drafted will proceed in con- 
sultation with state authorities. Heads o-f fami- 



AMERICA AT WAR 125 

lies will be exempted in the early stages of the 
war. Men will not be taken from indispensable 
tasks ; but there will be no exemption of whole 
classes. This was taken to mean that even agri- 
culturists will not be exempted as a class. ''In 
every indispensable vocation there are some in- 
dividual men who are not themselves indispen- 
sable." "We are going to wage this war not 
with our right hand, nor with our left hand — • 
but with both hands." 

Secretary Daniels of the Navy Department, 
said that the navy has now enlisted up to the 
full strength authorised by law. I think this 
strength is about 90,000 men. "In thirty-two 
days we have enlisted more men than were in 
the navy at the outbreak of the Spanish- Ameri- 
can War (19 years ago). Legislation already 
drafted is to be passed this week authorising 
expansion of navy enlistment to 150,000 men. 
Referring to the submarine, he said : "We know 
to-day [evidently alluding to specific informa- 
tion brought by the British delegates] that the 
submarine menace is graver than the most 
astute expert dreamed a year ago it could be- 
come. ' ' 

Adjutant General McKane pointed out that 
approximately 25,000 officers, additional to 
those now available, will need to be trained for 
the first increment of the army. These will be 
assembled in 14 training camps, which will ac- 



126 AMERICA AT WAR 

commodate 2,500 each. It will be seen that this 
aggregate provides for some weeding ont. The 
training of these potential officers will begin 
actively on May 15. None will get commissions 
until the end of the three months' training 
period. 

Judge Advocate General Crowder described 
the plan for compulsory registration, prior to 
the operation of the Selective Draft, as ' ' super- 
vised Decentralisation." The registration will 
be done in the ordinary voting precinct of the 
county. A County Board will assemble results 
for the county. The counties will be supervised 
by the state governor ; while the federal author- 
ity will supervise the states. Registration will 
occur throughout the entire country on one day. 
Crowder said there was no reason why registra- 
tion may not be completed on the tenth day 
after the Army bill is signed by the President. 

Franklin Lane, Secretary of the Interior, who 
is a Canadian by birth, and who is spoken of on 
all hands as, with the possible exception of Mc- 
Adoo of the Treasury, the ablest man in Wil- 
son's cabinet, sounded the most masterful note 
struck this morning. Under his jurisdiction 
comes the Patent Department, and he said they 
were summoning to the aid of the nation the 
best inventive genius of the United States. He 
was hopeful that this massed ability would sup- 
ply a way of meeting the submarine, which, 



AMERICA AT WAR 127 

they were told, accounted for 400,000 allied ton- 
nage last week. During the Civil War inven- 
tion after invention was struck off ''by the 
magic mind of man." During a conversation 
he had had recently with a group of inventors 
it had been suggested that it might be possible, 
by means of an electrical wave generated in the 
ship itself, either to deflect the torpedo or to 
cause its explosion before it reached the ship's 
side. 

Lane put the principles of the war in a very 
effective way from the American point of view. 
*'We may find a way of rescuing ourselves. I 
say 'ourselves.' This is just as truly our war 
as it is that of Britain or France. Those coun- 
tries are fighting for principles invented by us. 
We call England the Mother country. But we 
ourselves are the Mother country so far as the 
principles being fought for by the Allies, are 
concerned." Alluding to the criticism which 
would probably come and which the Administra- 
tion regarded as inevitable, he referred play- 
fully to Matthew Arnold. Arnold had spent his 
life in criticising the institutions of his day. 
WTien news of Arnold's death was carried to 
Andrew Lang, the latter said: "Poor Arnold, 
poor Arnold, I'm sorry for him. He won't like 
God." 

The Department of the Interior is appealing 
to farmers to organise around machines, trac- 



128 AMERICA AT WAR 

tors, threshing machines, and the like. These 
must be treated in the various commnnities as 
community property. The farmers are being 
asked to organise into companies, and plough, 
seed and harvest in flying squadrons, moving 
across the country. The farmers must "play 
the game" together. They must not count 
on the approaching exhaustion of Germany. 
Hoover, head of the American Food Board, had 
told him that, with a reasonable crop this sea- 
son, Germany has provisions that will last 
her for two years. She has still eighteen mil- 
lion cattle, and a good supply of iron and coal. 
I find I have too much material for one let- 
ter, and shall ask the editor to use the same 
caption for this and its successor. 



SPEEDING-UP OF AMERICAN PEODUCTION FOR WAR- 
TIME 

(Second Article) 

Washington, D. C, May Sth. 

AS I entered the room in the Munsey build- 
ing, where the National Defence Council 
was conducting its conference with Governors 
and State representatives, Wilson, Secretary of 
Labour, was just concluding his speech. All I 
heard from him was a warning to the State au- 
thorities to be careful about the employment of 
convict labour. ''Don't attempt to use it on the 
farms. The people won't stand for it. Use it, 
for example, on the roads." 

President Pierson, of Iowa Agricultural Col- 
lege, now associated with the National Council 
of Defence, representing Secretary Houston, 
was the chief speaker. The stock of food prod- 
ucts in the United States is at a low level. On 
the other hand the need abroad is unlimited. 
An expert before the Agricultural Committee 
of the House said the other day: ''It will take 
two years of bumper crops in America to fill 

129 



130 AMERICA AT WAR 

the ribs of Europe — animals as well as men." 

The Secretary of Agriculture has recom- 
mended to Congress that an appropriation of 
$25,000,000 be made for the purpose of a na- 
tional food survey. The major objects of the 
Department are: (1) the increasing of produc- 
tion, (2) the eliminating of waste, (3) the better 
distributing of food products. 

With respect to the labor supply Pierson said 
that the Department of Agriculture would en- 
deavour, through a representative appointed for 
each state, to ascertain the labour requirements 
and to assist in placing labour that is available. 
There are in the United States at least a half 
million retired farmers who would be able to as- 
sist in the present emergency. Similarly there 
are two million boys, say from fifteen to nine- 
teen, who have hitherto taken little share in na- 
tional production. 

There is fear in some quarters that over-pro- 
duction will occur, and that prices will slump. 
Secretary Houston can see no danger of such 
over-production. He has recommended to Con- 
gress that the Council of National Defence be 
armed with power to fix guaranteed minimum 
prices for staple products. It should also be 
given authority to fix maximum prices, in order 
to prevent hoarding, gambling, and manipulat- 
ing of every kind. 

There are 2,900 rural counties in the -United 



AMERICA AT WAR 131 

States; 1,700 of these have one agricultural 
agent each. It is proposed to appoint such an 
agent in each of the remaining 1,200 counties. 
These agents will be the ''minute men" in the 
speeding up process. It is estimated that 30 per 
cent, of the food products going into American 
homes, is wasted. It is similarly estimated, in 
Pierson's words, that ''on a pleasant July day" 
insects in the United States eat up 10,000,000 
dollars' worth of foodstuff. It is proposed to 
appoint in each county a woman agent to con- 
sult with women regarding household economy. 
The household waste of America is computed by 
the department at 700,000,000 dollars per an- 
num, which equals seven dollars per capita of 
the population. Question: "Is that all their 
waste (waist)?" Laughter. 

Each state either has, or will be asked to 
create, a state food committee or Committee of 
Public Safety. "This will be the means of 
communication between the Federal authority 
and the different states." Each county in turn 
will have its food organisation. These state and 
county committees will ultimately probably 
make a complete survey of labour and industrial 
man-power. The department thinks, however, 
that this census of man-power should be de- 
ferred until the Draft Registration is out of 
the way. (A man representing Texas here re- 
ported that the acreage increase in his state 



132 AMERICA AT WAR 

this season would be from 25 to 40 per cent.) 

Question : Does the Department purpose put- 
ting a ban right away on excess food consump- 
tion? Answer : Not yet, though the Department 
is making a careful study of European regula- 
tions. It is disposed to ''try out" first a cam- 
paign for the voluntary elimination of waste. 

In view of the threatened shortage of tin cans 
and glass jars, the Department of Commerce is 
urging the extensive use of paper containers. 
Householders are also being advised to make as 
much use as possible of sealed crocks, which 
were largely utilised in the Civil War period. 
Drying is also being recommended as a sub- 
stitute for canning — as, for example, in the case 
of corn. 

Question : Has the Department considered the 
establishment of municipal canning plants — the 
sort that cost from $200 to $400 apiece? These 
can be operated by High School girls under the 
direction of teachers, and are extensively in 
vogue in the South Atlantic States. Answer: 
The plan is feasible, and is being considered. 

I have made no attempt to arrange this mate- 
rial, but have left it in a rather rough, inchoate 
condition, because I think it conveys better in 
that form an impression of the swarming activ- 
ity that is under way here. Any one can see 
that there may easily be duplication an.d con- 



AMERICA AT WAR 133 

fusion of macliinery at the outset; but the su- 
perb organising ability of the country may be 
trusted to elicit harmony without great loss of 
time. 



XXI 

OEGANISATION Or THE NATION ON WAE BASIS PEO- 
CEEDS APACE 

Washington, D. C, May Sth. 
npHE National Council of Defence Confer- 
-■■ ence proceeded this morning. First speak- 
er, Willard, president of tlie Baltimore and 
Ohio railroad. His whole speech was couched 
in terms of the people's interest, and produced 
the most cordial feeling. His company had been 
asked to supply material for rehabilitating 1,500 
miles of French lines. They had been asked 
to send a committee to inspect Bussian roads. 
Its members will go in a few days. It would 
be necessary for the American roads to retrench 
in men and plant. For example, there 
are 6,500 men now employed uselessly as 
a result of "full-crew" laws. He suggested 
releasing these men, just during the emer- 
gency of the war, without prejudice. One 
thousand locomotives are being built in 
America for France and Russia. We must 
build more and more for our allies, and get 
on as best we can ourselves. Shippers in 

134 



AMERICA AT WAR 135 

this country now have 48 free hours in which 
to load and 48 hours in which to unload a car. 
Suggestion: Reduce this to 24. This alone 
would release 645,000 cars for one trip each 
year. In Germany shippers have only six hours 
free. Passenger schedules must be readjusted. 
Passenger trains in America operate 570,000,- 
000 miles a year. This should be reduced. Per- 
fectly feasible reductions on parallel lines can 
be effected releasing 4,000 passenger locomo- 
tives for freight. The railways will do this, 
provided the people's consent is forthcoming. 
Waterways and electric roads must be better 
co-ordinated with rail transportation. For in- 
stance, more use must be made of the Missis- 
sippi for getting coal to the northwest. 

Gilford, the Secretary of the National Defence 
Council, gave a full account of the organisation 
of this body. It has been at work only since 
December last. It consists of six Cabinet mem- 
bers, aided by an advisory committee of seven 
business men. Under the law this body has the 
power to create auxiliary committees. This 
system of auxiliary committees is a plan where- 
by the national government is proceeding to get 
the assistance of the selected brains of the coun- 
try. The members of these committees are serv- 
ing without pay. The significance of the scheme 
lies in the fact that it means that this nation is 
rising to meet the challenge of autocracy, not 



136 AMERICA AT WAR 

with sentiment alone, but with an assemblage of 
its producing and organising power. 

Auxiliary committees have already been con- 
stituted on 

(1) coal production, 

(2) shipping, 

(3) science and research. 

For example this committee is holding 
to-morrow a meeting of university presi- 
dents called from all parts of the country. 

(4) aircraft production, 

(5) women's defence committee, 

(6) commercial economy board. 

This committee will consider possible 
economy in cost of distribution, as for in- 
stance in the matter of delivery of mer- 
chandise to retail buyers. Later in the 
day, adverting to this subject, Redfield, 
Secretary for Commerce, pointed out that, 
whereas the annual expense bill for freight 
into and out of the city of Washington is 
seven million dollars, cartage in the city 
itself costs eight and a half millions. 

(7) Munitions board. 

The purchasing departments of the 
army and navy are represented on this 
committee, which meets every morning, 
Gifford added, rather significantly, I 
thought, "this means a ministry of muni- 
tions in embryo." 



AMERICA AT WAR 137 

(8) Committee on food supply. 

Hoover is to be head of this. The pa- 
pers to-day announce his arrival at New 
York, and his immediate departure for 
Washington. 

(9) Naval Consulting Board, which will pass 

on suggested inventions. 

(10) Army Supply Committee. 

Hitherto local quartermasters have 
awarded contracts for supplies. Hence- 
forward local committees of business men 
will sit with these officers and pass on con- 
tracts. Finally 

(11) a Committee representing the various 

government departments has been con- 
stituted. 

This meets every day, and its business 
will be to prevent clashing of interests as 
between the Departments in the matter of 
national defence. The states are being 
asked to form their own Councils of De- 
fence. Many of them have already done 
so. Finally, local or miniature defence 
councils are to be formed; so that there 
will in the near future be defence councils 
running from township or school district 
right up to the federal government. 
In the afternoon Redfield, of the Department 
of Commerce, spoke on the war activities of his 
department. He pleaded for vision and science 



138 AMERICAATWAR 

in the work of the nation. '^ Vision and science 
will save America, and they are the only things 
that will." '* Germany has done what she has, 
because she has applied science to production 
and to the prevention of waste." Carlyle said : 
' ' Produce, in God 's name, produce. ' ' This, said 
Eedfield, should be written over the door of 
every American home. I pause to say that these 
two days have seen no less than five members 
of the national government addressing to ten 
governors and to leading representatives of 
every state in the union, not only clarion calls 
to co-ordinated activity, but detailed specifica- 
tions as to how this co-ordination is to be ef- 
fected. Eedfield said his Department had per- 
fected an electrical machine for taking the next 
census without writing a word. This machine, 
I understood him to say, will be used for the ap- 
proaching military registration. The Depart- 
ment of Commerce is instructing the people in 
the use of new sea foods. Six months ago a 
certain fish was unused. To-day one million 
pounds of it a month are used. Here the gov- 
ernment has succeeded in fixing the price. It 
provides a label, and does the advertising of 
the new food on condition that a price of ten 
cents a can is observed. Price raised without 
permission, right to use of label withdrawn. A 
ten cent can makes a meal for three people. 
The readiness of the Department for the decla- 



AMERICA AT WAR 139 

ration of war was indicated by the circumstance 
that it turned forty-five ships under its control 
over to the Navy Department for mine-laying 
within fourteen minutes after the declaration of 
the state of war became effective. Toward the 
close of his speech, Eedfield made a very ''cute" 
observation. ' ' We are the wasters of the world. 
I. W. W. should be made to read, Industrious 
Wasters of the World. So translated, it de- 
scribes the American people as they have been 
hitherto. But we must change all that." The 
boys of the city of Washington made $5,700 out 
of old papers carried to school in a period of 
six months. Cattle-fodder can be made out of 
saw-dust. Before the war ''Germany was di/e- 
ing the world." To-day 800,000 tons of osage- 
orange — so I caught it— are being utilised in 
this country per annum to make a certain yel- 
low dye. The osage-orange was regarded as a 
nuisance before the supply of German dyes was 
cut off. 



XXII 

WOODKOW WILSON AND AETHUR BALFOTJE IN THE 
HOUSE OF KEPKESENTATIVES 

Washington^ D. C, May 8th. 
TF Joffre isn't spoiled by America it will be 
-■■ because he can't be. Everything he has 
done in this country to date has been just right. 
It is because his nature is thoroughly sound and 
wholesome. I should dearly like some time in 
the future, say ten years from now, to come 
upon him in a simple fishing boat in the Bay 
of Biscay, or pruning some humble vine on the 
slopes of the Pyrenees, and find him still the 
same as he has been as victor of the Marne or 
as the lion of America. 

Reverting to Redfield's smart remark about 
''the Industrious Wasters of the World," the 
lavishness of this country is prodigious. A very 
interesting man gave me some instances the 
other night. A big saloon keeper in New York 
recently told him of three men who had a few 
evenings before started in and spent $900 in 
his place in one night. He told me of bachelor 
apartments he had lately been in in New York 

140 



AMERICA AT WAR 141 

that cost their tenants $5,500 a year. The 
same man talking of the war taxation proposals 
now approaching Congress, said that in his 
town of Akron, Ohio, there are six firms, who, 
if the present tentative plans materialise, will 
be mulcted in aggregate war contributions to 
the tune of nine million dollars. "Will they 
squeal?" '^ Not a bit of it." 

Last night as I was sitting waiting for Ma- 
jor Spendley-Clay, of the British Mission, to 
begin to speak at the National Press Club, the 
Hawaiian delegate to Congress entered, and, 
happily for me, sat down next to me. I ** en- 
gaged" him. Speaks English perfectly. He is 
nephew, not son— as I had been informed— to a 
former king of the islands. He is the cousin of 
the well known deposed Queen Liliuokalani 
(whether this name is spelt correctly or not, I 
cannot tell. The delegate's name I really can- 
not undertake to transcribe.) Alaska and 
Hawaii are now the only territories left to be 
represented in Congress. The Hawaiian dele- 
gate draws the same salary as an ordinary rep- 
resentative, can move resolutions, and speak, 
but cannot vote or raise a point of order. Porto 
Rico and the Philippines are represented in 
Congress by commissioners, who sit by virtue 
of resolutions of the House. The Hawaiian 
delegate represents 243,000 people, of whom 
85,000 are in Honolulu. He says the islands 



142 AMERICA AT WAR 

have 100,000 Asiatics among their population, 
of whom four or five hundred, having been born 
in Hawaii, have the vote. He is proud of 
Hawaii, and completely satisfied with American 
treatment of her. He says his people have ad- 
vanced from savagery to civilisation in 100 
years. Thirty-four years after the arrival of 
American missionaries "we had a written lan- 
guage, compulsory education, and a constitu- 
tional king. ' ' He volunteered the extraordinary 
statement that only two per cent, of the inhabi- 
tants are illiterate. 

To date the present Congress has shown a 
fine temper, on the war particularly. One 
thing that pleases me is the independent and 
new alignment that occurs on questions as they 
arise. There is no evidence of a "bloc" of any 
kind. I hope some of the readers of these let- 
ters will recall that in an early message I sug- 
gested that the Censorship bill would probably 
have "its fangs drawn." Yesterday by a de- 
cisive vote in the house the obnoxious clause was 
changed completely in character. Of course, 
as the war situation grows more tense, and if 
the newspapers do not show themselves ani- 
mated by a high sense of responsibility, the 
President's demands may be more fully ac- 
ceded to. Kahn, Mann, Republican House leader 
and Swagar Sherley, of Kentucky, all of whom 
were protagonists on the President's .side in 



AMERICA AT WAR 143 

the Draft bill, stoutly opposed tlie administra- 
tion's censorship clause. 

Prior to the arrival of Mr. Balfour at th© 
House to-day I heard Cannon for the first time. 
The American octogenarian, whose parliamen- 
tary career, by the way, almost exactly equals 
in length that of the British Commissioner, 
spoke in vigorous criticism of the Federal Re- 
serve banking system. The Justices of the Su- 
preme Court, who came from time to time into 
the Chamber, included "White, the Chief Justice, 
and Brandeis. Brandeis is a small, dark, wiry 
looking man, offering a marked contrast to his 
portly chief. During the waiting interval a tele- 
gram to the House was read from the President 
of the Chamber of Deputies of Roumania, ex- 
tending to the American Legislature its ' ' felici- 
tations les plus chaleureuses" on the entry of 
America into the war. After the reading was 
finished there were impatient cries for an Eng- 
lish version, to which Champ Clark replied: 
"Can't read a thing you haven't got." About 
five minutes before Balfour arrived, President 
"Wilson entered the President's gallery, accom- 
panied by Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. McAdoo. He 
rose twice to respond to greetings of the 
crowded house. 

It was noteworthy that Mr. Balfour began 
by addressing "Ladies and gentlemen of the 
House of Representatives." The British en- 



144 AMERICA AT WAR 

voy speaks with an occasional hesitation, which, 
to-day at any rate, seemed only to enhance the 
impression of sincerity produced by his utter- 
ance. "I have been for forty-three years in 
the service of a free assembly like your 
own. These two are the greatest and old- 
est of the assemblies now governing the demo- 
cratic nations of the world. The full rights of 
the British assembly have been won only after 
long political struggle. Your lot was happier. 
You came into being full and perfected in your 
powers under the constitution. Each of the 
two represents the great democratic principle 
which is the bulwark of the world's security. 
This is one of the great moments in the history 
of the world. It means the drawing together 
of free peoples for mutual protection against 
military despotism. All free assemblies have 
made mistakes ; they have sometimes committed 
crimes ; but only the German nation has shown 
itself capable, over a long period of years, of 
pursuing, steadily and remorselessly, a policy 
whose object is the moral and material subju- 
gation of the world." 

As I finished writing this in the press gallery 
quarters, two men opposite me were engaged 
looking up the Congressional Record to see a 
citation made in the censorship debate by a 
congressman from Milton's ''Areopagitica," 
which the pressman declared the speaker had 



AMERICA AT WAR 145 

characterised as ''the greatest plea for a free 
press to be found in American literature. ' ' His 
companion then reminded him of a declaration, 
alleged to have been once made by Joseph Can- 
non that ''he had always thought the Faerie 
Queene the greatest thing ever written by Her- 
bert Spencer." It is more than probable that 
both incidents are imaginary. 



XXIII 

AMEKICA RALLYING IN A FERMENT OP ACTIVITY 

Washington, D. C, May 9th. 
TV/f Y stay in Washington draws necessarily to 
■*- -^ its close, but I find it hard to tear myself 
away from this centre where the surprising war 
activities of a mighty nation are converging 
without sign of respite. 

This morning as I emerged from the Press 
Club, I was lucky enough to overtake "Uncle 
Joe" Cannon, "I was struck while Mr. Bal- 
four was addressing the house yesterday, by 
the fact that his parliamentary career just 
about tallies with yours, Mr. Cannon, — forty- 
three years," I volunteered. ''But he is not 
nearly as old a man as you. " "I think they go 
into public life earlier in England than they do 
here. I was about thirty-six when I started." 
"You must have taken very good care of your- 
self, to be hale and hearty at eighty-one?" "No, 
I never took any care of myself. I've always 
noticed that the men who are always taking care 
of their health, are likely to die young. ' ' Going 
on he said : ' ' They talk about hard work killing 
people. It's all poppy-cock. Gluttony kills a 

146 



AMERICA AT WAR 147 

great many, worry kills some, but the man 
that's killed by work is hard to find." 

The war dominates everything here now. 
Table-talk, slang, advertisements — everything 
is informed by the consciousness of the strug- 
gle. *'Sit down, but don't intern" was the 
smart legend I saw yesterday on a card over a 
businessman's desk. ''They have 750 Commis- 
sions in the state of Wisconsin," said one of 
a group of newspaper men in the House press 
gallery yesterday. ''I wish to Heaven they'd 
go on now and appoint one to inquire into the 
sanity of 'Bob' LaFoUette," interjected an- 
other. "LaFollette was a national figure once," 
said a man to me in the hotel rotunda last night. 
"Everybody was partially insane about him. 
The point is, though, that they have all come 
back to their senses — except himself." 

Canadians have been perfectly right in feel- 
ing an enormous re-inforcement of confidence 
through the advent of the United States in the 
war. I feel as nearly as possible perfectly con- 
fident that whoever or whatever may fall away 
from the side of Great Britain, the accession of 
the United States means that Britain's side will 
win. There is an unbelievable ferment of ac- 
tivity here. Last night it was somewhat au- 
thoritatively announced by the Naval Board 
that no fewer than 500 devices or plans for the 



148 AMERICA AT WAR 

suppression of tlie submarine had already been 
submitted since the declaration of war. 

One of the most hopeful signs on the horizon 
is what I have, perhaps, already called ^'the 
bone" or ''the iron" in American policy to-day. 
Witness the absolute and calm ignoring of pos- 
sibly anti-national forces within the nation by 
the adoption, you may say, within thirty days of 
the declaration of war, of scientific and iron- 
bound conscription. Witness, as an integral 
part of that scheme, a copper-riveted, unflinch- 
ing, obligatory registration of men within the 
prescribed ages. The plans are so minute and 
the organisation so complete that it is consid- 
ered possible that this enrollment of say 7,- 
000,000 males, may be an accomplished fact 
within fifteen days of the President's procla- 
mation. Unless all signs fail, Germany caught 
a Tartar when she drove America into the war. 

One of the solid reasons why Canadians may 
count with confidence on the effectiveness of a 
rallied America, is the superb facilities this 
country possesses for the mobilisation of opin- 
ion and the organisation of resources. Ex- 
amples : Yesterday presidents and representa- 
tives of 180 universities were in consultation 
here in Washington with the Secretary for War. 
This morning Secretary of Labor Wilson an- 
nounces, with the collaboration of Secretary of 
the Interior Lane, a plan for the enrolment of 



AMERICA AT WAR 149 

5,000,000 boys below the draft age, under the 
auspices of the United States Boys' Reserve for 
auxiliary war work. To-morrow night begins 
here a Conference under the direction of the 
Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer- 
ica with respect to the war. This body repre- 
sents 18,000,000 people. Among the speakers 
are to be Jowett of New York, John R. Mott, 
Robert E. Speer, and Raymond Robins, who 
recently visited Winnipeg. I have already re- 
ferred to the unreserved war manifesto of the 
Roman Catholic archbishops. Two members of 
the British Mission, by the way, lunched yes- 
terday at Baltimore with Cardinal Gibbons. 

As my Washington sojourn approaches its 
end, I am permitting myself to take a look at 
the past of the capital, which so far, I had had 
to ignore. Saturday afternoon I turned my 
steps toward the old Ford theatre and the 
house across the way where Lincoln died. By 
coincidence it was a coloured man who desig- 
nated the house for me. ''This is the house," 
he said. A reference to this memorable spot is 
germane to the caption ''The United States at 
War," because America enters this struggle 
with two supreme memories — the memories of 
Washington and of Lincoln. As I came away 
from that humble lodging house, I found myself 
fully under the spell of that homely, simple 
man who lifts, by some strange alchemy, every- 



150 AMERICA AT WAR 

body who comes in contact with his personality, 
to the highest level of his faculty of goodness. 

This afternoon I met on the street Frank L. 
McYey, President of the University of North 
Dakota, who was just leaving for New York 
after attending the war conference of the uni- 
versities. I asked him if the universities would 
be able to render practical assistance. He said, 
"Undoubtedly." ''Are they placing their lab- 
oratories and so on at the disposal of the gov- 
ernment?" "That's already done." The only 
divergent strain that developed at the confer- 
ence was the suggestion of a minority that the 
conference should make a pronouncement in 
favor of three new executive departments or 
ministries : Food, munitions and shipping. The 
weight of opinion was in favour of leaving the 
government schemes time to develop. 

After leaving President McVey, I treated my- 
self to a 'bus trip through the city to get the 
ensemble view that my work had not permitted 
me to get earlier. The guide 's jokes were very 
good — at any rate when falling on virgin 
soil. I have no doubt they are strictly stand- 
ardised, but those of my readers who have 
heard them will forgive me, if I retail a few 
of them, for people as ingenuous as I am my- 
self. Passing two stores, one devoted to boots 
and shoes (Kann's) and one to clothing (Saks), 
he said, "Men are frequently seen here coming 



AMERICA AT WAR 151 

out of sacks and going into cans." A certain 
building he pointed out as the scene of the only- 
political speech delivered by Bryan in Washing- 
ton. "He lost his overcoat and hat that day. 
Some people think it's a pity he didn't lose his 
voice too." Turning into a rough stretch of 
street, he said, ''Sometimes called Roosevelt 
street — it's such a rough rider." As we went 

past the residence of of New 

York, he volunteered this explanation of its 
three stories below the street level: ''It's said 
in Washington that he is trying to meet his 
father halfway." The vicinity of Dupont Cir- 
cle is occupied by the homes of the very rich. 
He declared that here "the people scrub their 
floors with gold dust, their motors have dia- 
mond tires, the horses wear checks on their 
heads, the birds carry bills, and the grass has 
green backs. ' ' Circling the Natural History Mu- 
seum he said: "This building contains every- 
thing except the South Pole — even including the 
Roosevelt River of Doubt, which flows up hill 
for forty miles." Passing the residence occu- 
pied by Cannon when Speaker of the House, 
the guide gave us the benefit of this jingle, 
' ' Cannons may come, and Cannons may go, but 
there'll never be another like 'Old Uncle 
Joe.' " 



XXIV 

mabyland's capital iisr wae-time 

Baltimore, Maryland, May Bth. 
f~\F the fifty minutes that it took ns this mom- 
^-^ ing to run from Washington to Baltimore, 
I spent twenty at breakfast and thirty in con- 
versation with Wharton Monney, a New Or- 
leans business man. He is of French extrac- 
tion on both sides. His mother, who, with her 
mother again, was bom in New Orleans, speaks 
French only. She understands English, but an- 
swers in French. My interlocutor this morning 
had met Victor Bouche, of Winnipeg, in Cali- 
fornia. He said : ' ' Two years ago the man who 
would have mentioned conscription for this 
country, I would have thought insane. But it's 
the only thing. I'm a convert now. When the 
war began, and for two years after, I thought 
only of France. I didn't see England. Not 
that I disliked her, but I thought France. Now, 
I see that we should have been more closely in 
touch with England all the time. England is 
splendidly democratic to-day." 
My last meal in Washington I had 'With two 
152 



AMERICA AT WAR 153 

congressmen, Dill, of Spokane, Washington, 
and Nicholls, of Detroit. They differed about 
the proposed war tax of 5 per cent, on the gross 
receipts, for example, of automobile factories. 
The Detroit man said: "There are 400 auto- 
mobile manufacturers in the United States. 
Eighty per cent, of the business is done by 12 
of these. This 5 per cent, tax will put a lot of 
the small men out of commission.'^ Dill said: 
''Let business pay. I have no sympathy with 
'business as usual.' If the plain people send 
their sons in, the business men will have to send 
their money." Of course there is no finality 
about the war revenue bill as it is now drawn. 

After Nicholls left I had a very interesting 
disclosure from Mr. Dill. I am going to give 
the gist of what he said, prefacing it by the re- 
mark, which may be relied upon to the letter, 
that his contribution respecting the war is, 
with the exception of the views of the German 
I met at Pittsburgh, the solitary expression 
on that side of the issue that I have heard 
since I entered the United States four weeks 
ago to-morrow. Dill is only 32, and is sitting 
his second term in Congress. He is a handsome, 
and very "taking" fellow. "I've had rather 
an odd career. As a matter of fact I'm in a 
peculiar position right now. My state ir Re- 
publican. Democrats hadn't a look in. The 
Republican-Progressive split gave us our 



154 AMERICA AT WAR 

chance, and I won tlie second last time by 12,- 

000 majority. This time, party lines having set- 
tled down, I didn't think I had a ghost of a 
show, bnt I won by 5,000. What did I win on? 
On pledges, given to the hilt, that we must keep 
America out of the war. I had talked with 
Wilson. He said to me that the worst we should 
come to, would be armed neutrality. Banking 
on that I went the limit on every platform, ad- 
vocating keeping America at peace. Now, what 
am I confronted by, when I come to Washing- 
ton? War and conscription. I was one of the 
fifty or so in the house to vote against the Dec- 
laration of a state of war. What else could I 
do? I had given specific pledges. How could 

1 have looked people in the face if I hadn't 
done as I said I would do? My father's prin- 
ciple was, your word as good as your note. I 
have little doubt that I have committed political 
hari-kiri, but I'm not worrying much about 
that." *'How is the war feeling developing 
among your people [state of Washington]?" 
"Not much. Most of my people have a notion 
that it is a Wall Street war. The newspapers 
have turned the trick." ''Aside from your dif- 
ficult political position, what is your own psy- 
chology now? What do you think about the 
war?" "Well, we're in; we'll have to make 
the best of it. We simply have to win. That's 
all there's to it. I think some of taking train- 



AMERICA AT WAR 155 

ing as an officer. I have always liked that sort 
of thing." 

I hope my readers will remember two things 
at this point. I repeat, this is, with the excep- 
tion indicated, the one declaration of this sort 
I have heard, and I have now talked with a 
very large number of people in a very free way. 
In the second place. Dill's position is perfectly 
self-respecting. He was elected on a platform of 
continued peace. We find fault fundamentally 
with that position, but I have no reason to be- 
lieve that this particular congressman did not 
subscribe to it honestly. Confronted by the 
point-blank opposite of his pledges, he adhered 
to them. Now that the country is at war he is 
prepared cheerfully not to return to Congress. 

' ' There is no doubt, ' ' he said, ' 'that the Presi- 
dent has the country in general overwhelmingly 
with him. ' ' In the meantime he is contemplat- 
ing joining the armed forces. He is not with- 
out anticipation that there may be some trouble 
in western, for example, in mining states, when 
the draft comes to be applied. "The plan is 
to have the local drafting supervised by the 
county sheriff, doctor and one other official 
[whose designation I have forgotten]. If these 
fellows show any favouritism, men in my state 
— ^miners for instance — won't waste much time 
with them. They'll simply ignore the small 
politicians, make their own Board, and see that 



156 AMERICA AT WAR 

the thing is done on the square." With all of 
which there is no fault to he found. I asked 
him if the draft would be applied unflinchingly 
in foreign- American areas, or whether a cer- 
tain discretion would be practised in this re- 
gard. He said he believed it would be applied 
entirely uniformly. ''Are the foreigners likely 
to resist drafting!" ''No, I don't think there 
is any likelihood of that." And it will be noted 
that the trouble he would not be surprised to 
find in mining and labour communities, will oc- 
cur only, according to his mind, in the event of 
favouritism. I think it my duty to give the 
point of view of this attractive politician who 
opposed the war. 

The initial view of Baltimore makes one think 
of St. Paul — narrow streets, for one thing. The 
buildings are beflagged, though not so copiously 
as those of the capital. I noticed that from the 
balcony over the Charles Street entrance to the 
residence of Cardinal Gibbons, Baltimore's 
most eminent citizen, the Stars and Stripes 
float. The Cardinal's palace is immediately at 
the rear of the cathedral. Within the cathedral 
at each side of the main entrance is a large 
painting given by Louis XVIII. of France to 
the arch-diocese of Baltimore. One is a picture 
of Saint Louis burying plague-stricken crusad- 
ers at Tunis, by an artist whose name the dim 



AMERICA AT WAR 15T 

light kept me from deciphering. The other is 
a Descent from the Cross, by Guerin. 

Through the hotel window as I write I see a 
squad of marine recruits forming up. The 
street cars hear placards with the legend: ''Un- 
cle Sam Wants You. Step out and enlist now. 
Be a man. Have the sand. Bear a hand. ' ' I was 
reminded sharply of Grermany 's cleverness when 
my attention was directed across the harbour to 
the spot where fheDeutschland docked. The Bal- 
timore Sun this morning has a front page full 
column on Canada's effort to increase produc- 
tion. It ends: ''What will Marylanders do to 
swell production?" The two chief editorials to- 
day in the Baltimore American, Hearst's paper, 
are entitled: "The Kaiser's Buncombe" and 
"The Lusitania Cycle." The former ends: 
"Out of France with the outlaws, is in effect the 
slogan that is being sounded by the French and 
British guns as they beat back the Kaiser's in- 
vincibles, and leave the Hindenburg army's myr- 
iad dead upon the field." The last paragraph of 
"The Lusitania Cycle" reads: "The harvest of 
the wrath of God is ripening and the harvest 
will be reaped as surely as law follows license, 
as surely as the judgments of the Almighty 
stand fast. The issue the United States has 
joined with Germany will witness the triumph 
of American arms, American honour, and 
American succour for civilisation." 



XXV 

PENN's city en fete for the FRENCH ENVOYS 

Philadelphia, May 10th. 
nn HE gladdest of May weather welcomed the 
-*■ French envoys in Philadelphia on their 
way to New York. ''Buy the allied flags" was 
the cry that greeted me as I emerged this morn- 
ing from the Hotel Walton. The city streets 
are aflame with colour. In the early part of the 
day a brisk breeze made the flags dance and 
gave the streets an air of vivacity that affected 
one strangely in this Quaker city. Later the 
breeze died away, and lazily drooping flags 
made solidity take the place of the earlier mo- 
bility. Many of the multitudes that thronged 
the streets and the cars carried flags, the tri- 
colour holding its own bravely with the native 
Stars and Stripes. 

I reached the Girls' High School opposite the 
United States Mint just about five minutes 
before the arrival of the French party. Here 
about 1,500 girls were massed in front of the 
school. The school-front was just a bank of 
colour. A pause ensued. Suddenly a move- 
ment ran through the crowd, a squad of motor- 

158 



AMERICA AT WAR 159 

cycle policemen dashed up, and before we 
knew it, almost, the familiar figures of Joffre 
and Viviani were before us. Viviani and Joffre 
were in the first motor, Jusserand in the sec- 
ond, Chocheprat, the French admiral, in the 
third. The girls sang ''The Marseillaise" and 
"The Star Spangled Banner" splendidly, wav- 
ing their flags between the stanzas. When 
"Vive la France" was shouted, Joffre saluted. 
Otherwise he stood motionless. As the last 
cry died away, the carriages dashed off. 

Their next stop was at the sturdy, resolute 
statue of Joan of Arc, near the entrance to 
Fairmount Park. Here Joffre deposited a 
wreath, bound Avith intertwined French and 
American colours. After a ceremony at Penn's 
house in the park itself, the party proceeded to 
the University of Pennsylvania, where honour- 
ary degrees were conferred on the Frenchmen 
by the Provost of the university. The degrees 
were conferred at the base of the statue of 
Franklin, the founder of the university. The 
statue represents Franklin as a youth starting 
out to find his fortune — in right hand a bundle, 
in left hand a rustic stick. The face wears a 
cheery, forward-looking expression, making one 
think of Dick Whittington. His feet are strik- 
ing a stride that reminded me of the statue of 
Wilhelm Tell in Altdorf, Switzerland. 

I pause to remark that the foundations of 



160 AMERICA AT WAR 

American education were laid by men blessed 
with ideality and vision. So it was with John 
Harvard; so with Thomas Jefferson, the 
founder of the University of Virginia; and so, 
here again, with Franklin, the founder of the 
University of Pennsylvania. 

From the Franklin statue the party pro- 
ceeded to the closely adjoining Franklin Field, 
where twenty-four thousand people were seated 
in the stadium. The motors of the party made 
the circle of the field, and then one thousand 
recruits of the university, some in uniform and 
some not, paraded. I got back to my hotel just 
as the party was entering the Bellevue-Strat- 
ford Hotel, nearly opposite us, for the luncheon 
tendered by the municipality. 

The chief memories that dominate Philadel- 
phia are those of Franklin, Penn and Washing- 
ton. Witnessing the homage offered to-day by 
the Frenchmen to the memory of Franklin I 
have not been able to dismiss from my mind that 
notable scene, enacted during the apotheosis 
of Voltaire in Paris in 1778, when the great 
Deist, meeting Franklin and his son or grand- 
son, I forget which, resting his hand on the 
young boy's shoulder, pronounced the talis- 
manic words, ''Dieu et Liberte." Some such 
thought doubtless was running through Vol- 
taire's mind on that occasion in the presence 
of young America as was in Viviani's to-day 



AMERICA AT WAR 161 

when lie said, "America is posterity." As I 
stood this afternoon before the little brick 
house of Penn overlooking the Schuylkill River 
in Fairmount Park, my mind reverted in 1898, 
when, from the churchyard of Stoke-Poges, im- 
mortalised by Thomas Gray, I saw rising across 
the Buckinghamshire fields the stately manor 
house of the Penns. Putting the two buildings 
side by side mentally, it is as if the son of an 
Ontario farmer, accustomed to living in an old 
stone farm-house surrounded by orchards and 
comfort, had gone out to Saskatchewan or Al- 
berta and there built his homesteader's shack. 

The Mayor of Philadelphia, speaking to-day 
in the room where the Declaration of Independ- 
ence was signed, is reported as saying in part in 
the presence of the French envoys: ''Here, in 
this little room, the Fathers in 1776 proclaimed 
liberty under law. On this altar the flame of 
liberty was lighted. And so to testify the depth 
and sincerity of our love for France, we have 
brought you to the most sacred spot in Amer- 
ica, that, humbly bowing in supplication be- 
fore Him Who holds in the hollow of His hand 
the issues of life and death, of victory and de- 
feat, we may ask comfort for those who suffer 
and new strength for those who battle for the 
right." 

The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph says to- 
night: ''To-day the hearts of our people are 



162 AMERICA AT WAR 

warm with pride because America has pledged 
her blood and treasure to help complete the 
triumph of France, the final extermination of 
autocracy from Europe. In their hour of in- 
fant peril, France went to the rescue of the 
thirteen American colonies ; in their hour of in- 
vincible might, the states which have grown out 
of those colonies strike hands with France in 
defence of freedom, and to bring a lasting peace 
to all mankind." 

The Ledger says : * ' To-day it is the promise. 
To-morrow it will be the fulfilment. All of our 
energy, all of our wealth, all of our hope and 
blood we offer in defence of the altars which 
have been defiled. We cheer, but our hearts are 
set to the grim duty ahead. We shall not fail 
our friends." 

Every one who sees Viviani is struck with the 
sadness of his face. Amid the loudest acclama- 
tions it is only a sort of haunted smile that 
lights up his sensitive features. It is as if, in 
the midst of this splendid material civilisation, 
in the midst of these endless multitudes, he 
cannot shut out the thought of France bleeding 
at every vein. Only now and then, when the 
thought of what all this teeming man-power and 
wealth can do, if only it can be brought to bear 
in time, breaks upon him, as it were in a wild 
spasm of hope and scarcely entertained joy, he 



AMERICA AT WAR 163 

flings his arms about one or other of his com- 
rades. 

Viviani and Balfour have proven admirable 
representatives of their respective races here. 
Joffre, of course, stands by himself, and I am 
not speaking of him at this moment. Balfour's 
oratory, slightly hesitant in delivery but moving 
with ordered strength in print, is completely 
British, as indeed are his whole conduct and de- 
portment. Viviani is Latin to the core. His 
quick, darting emotionalism, his rapid improv- 
isation, enforced by febrile gesture, are sting- 
ing America into a realisation of the facts. The 
appeal of the French Commission has been suc- 
cessfully made to the heart and the imagina- 
tion of America. The British Commission has 
appealed with equal success to its judgment. 
The union of the two makes a strategic com- 
bination of the first consequence. 



XXVI 

WILSOlSr AND EOOSEVELT 

New York, May 11th. 
IVTEW YOEK is a world phenomenon. Like 
"^^ London, it is too big to speak about en 
masse. A myriad, ant-like population, moving 
about with dashing swiftness amid cyclopean 
structures and through great gorge-like streets 
ablaze with allied colours — this would be a 
thrust at a definition of the American metropo- 
lis as it looks to-day. 

Joffre and Viviani have been here two days. 
Balfour comes to-day. The reception of the 
Frenchmen, lifted to a giant crescendo, staggers 
description. Perhaps I have talked enough 
even about them. No doubt the wired des- 
patches, giving the colour of this mammoth 
event, are very full, so I forbear further com- 
ment. 

While waiting for New York material to 
straighten out in my mind there are some other 
matters I wish to speak of. I did not come 
down here to exploit any thesis, formed in ad- 
vance, but as faithfully as might be to reflect 
the facts and submit them to my readers in 

164 



AMERICA AT WAR 165 

order to supplement their usual sources of in- 
formation. 

In tlie first place, Roosevelt is the big indig- 
enous figure before the American imagination 
to-day. He embodies America, lusty, laughing, 
action-loving America, as no one else does. He 
is at the back of every conversation, with high 
and low, literate and illiterate, rich and poor, 
drunk and sober. I could not help thinking of 
him to-day at Columbia while the degrees were 
being given Viviani and Joffre. Mitchel, the 
Mayor, was there, but there were few eyes for 
him. Hughes was there, but he got no atten- 
tion. If Teddy had unexpectedly rolled up in 
his motor, the whole ''works" would have 
stopped and the concourse would have given 
him an ovation that would have vied with that 
to Joffre. 

Teddy is a problem to-day for President Wil- 
son. I am going to speak frankly in this letter 
about Wilson, for whom I have great respect. 
He is a man of the first ability. His capacity 
is of the highly intellectual, rationalised, and, in 
that sense, scientific order. He is master of his 
administration. His Cabinet contains no na- 
tional figures — McAdoo and Lane measurably 
excepted. Even these two have no large na- 
tional reputations, that is, if you fix your scale 
by Roosevelt or by Wilson. I can imagine some 
one's being made impatient by this denial of 



166 AMERICA AT WAR 

''national reputations" to the heads of the re- 
spective Executive Departments, so I pause to 
say in a word what I mean. When some one 
says, "Secretary of War Baker," you think 
of the Secretary of War, not of Baker. When 
some one says, ''Secretary of the Navy Dan- 
iels," you think of the Secretary of the Navy, 
not of Daniels. That puts in a nutshell what 
I mean, and, incidentally, shows that I do not 
mean anything very bad. Of the executive end 
of the United States government, then, Wilson 
is undisputed master. His supremacy over the 
present Congress is more questionable. If it 
were not for the war he might, conceivably, be 
having a hard time. It is hardly necessary to 
add that, of the Democratic party, Wilson is the 
dominating figure. He is first, and there is, as 
yet, no second. 

The scientific character of Wilson's states- 
manship is reflected in his Army Bill. So far 
as a big and ultimately efficient army of the kind 
that will be required for a long war, is concern- 
ed, Wilson is beyond question absolutely right. 
In this respect it is nothing short of a godsend 
that at this juncture, the country is in the charge 
of a man Hke him. But now comes in the cry 
of France for instant help. Because, make no 
mistake about it, the appeal of France is to-day 
a "cry" — a cry warranted and self-respecting, 
but undisguisedly poignant. The man 'or the 



AMERICA AT WAR 167 

people that does not help France to-day de- 
serves the cold shoulder from the total French 
race of the future. In this situation the French 
envoys have been insistent, in the good sense 
of the word. I should not be surprised to know 
that they have even embarrassed Wilson a lit- 
tle, in this particular. I say this, without im- 
plying for an instant that his ultimate inten- 
tions with respect to France are not of the 
noblest. But he has been planning for an ade- 
quate and long sustained effort. The French 
Commissioners want this, but in addition they 
want a measure of immediate help, and they 
want the moral advantage of the Stars and 
Stripes. Eoosevelt wants to go. He wanted to 
go, before Joffre came. Now comes Joffre^ — 
and the two national idols see absolutely eye to 
eye. Wilson has the air of sticking and hang- 
ing about this Roosevelt business. The official 
explanation implied is: Could such a force 
as Eoosevelt contemplates, be equipped and 
trained in a hurry, as it must be, for a war of 
the character of the present? But back against 
this comes the message of the French Mission 
touching the Russian contingent on French soil. 
50,000 Russian conscripts appear in France. 
They have only the most elementary training. 
They are slow peasants. After five weeks' 
training back of the lines they go into action, 
and not only inspirit France and dampen Ger- 



168 AMERICA AT WAR 

many, but actually win their first engagments. 

Incidentally, it grows painfully clear to me 
that we in Canada have blundered in keeping 
our troops in training for such inordinate pe- 
riods on Canadian soil. I do not wonder that 
there have been blunders ; and it is easy to be 
wise after the event. But the evidence of the 
French Mission convinces me that the only ef- 
fective place to train troops for this war, is as 
near as possible to the sound of the guns. 

To resume reference to the Wilson-Roosevelt 
tussle. Because, make no mistake about it, a 
keen ^'tussle" is going forward between the ex- 
tremely able man in the White House, and the 
bouncing America-embodying man outside the 
White House. He would be a daring individual 
who would dogmatise just now, as to which will 
win. Note, here, that the one that wins for the 
moment may not win in the long run. But fur- 
ther, from Wilson's side in this argument: will 
it blur the popular mind as to the propriety of 
the Draft, to authorise this voluntary, one might 
almost say, guerilla force? But back pitilessly 
comes the answer : the men of this force would 
be above the conscript ages, and would repre- 
sent a totally additional resource. A reason 
advanced privately on Wilson's side, and a rea- 
son that has something in it, is that this ex- 
peditionary force, thus spectacularly gathered, 
would be in the limelight all the timfe, and 



AMERICA AT WAR 169 

would get all the credit as against the more 
drably organised body of the army. This is a 
good point, but cannot be said to be bulking 
large in the popular mind. 

One is sorry to say it, but the deep reason 
for the reluctance at Washington is the political 
situation. The enterprise, carried through in 
characteristic Rooseveltian fashion, would elect 
Teddy in 1920. That is, of course, presuming 
that he survived. Here, I must, without pro- 
nouncement on my part, bring in the contention 
advanced by very many, that Wilson is stiffly 
partisan. No one pretends to discount his abil- 
ity. I for my part have no disposition to dis- 
count his high-mindedness. But it is as clear 
as it can reasonably be, that there is no instant 
spontaneity about him. There is little magnet- 
ism. There is a great brain. There is a finely 
ordered intelligence. There is executive mast- 
ery. There is calmness, poise, and a long range 
of prescience But amplitude of personality, 
warmth of feeling, downright generosity of im- 
pulse seem rather lacking. 

In fact Wilson and impulse seem strangers. 
Needless to say, this temperament has certain 
great advantages. It comports in some impor- 
tant respects with the leadership of a great 
state. But it fails, equally indubitably, to grap- 
ple to its side the surging passion of the people, 
which constitutes the psychological element in a 



170 AMERICA AT WAR 

national effort of the first magnitude. There is 
no warmth in popular or personal references to 
the President. His office is, of course, so exalted 
that he commands complete respect. No one 
hints that his talents are not commensurate with 
his station. But, on the whole, without driving 
the words to their limit, he does not swell out 
the office by that large appeal either to the af- 
fections or to the imagination, which is essential 
to the ideal leader in elemental times. 

Not seldom one encounters great bitterness, 
a sort of unappeasable grudge, in conversations 
about him by men who are yet, or at the same 
time, bent heart and soul on supporting him in 
the prosecution of the war. The last man I 
have in mind in this connection is a young en- 
gineer whom I chatted with on my way from 
Philadelphia to New York. This is the gist of 
what he said : The whole thing now is a matter 
of drab duty. Wilson has taken all the punch, 
bounce, and pride out of the people in the mat- 
ter of war. The time to strike was when Bel- 
gium was invaded. That responsibility was 
side-stepped. To use my man's exact word, 
' ' ducked. ' ' A second time came when the Lusi- 
tania was sunk. "Duck" again. Wilson was 
re-elected on the cry: ''He kept us out of the 
war. ' ' He has taught millions of my country- 
men to think we were justified in ''skulking." 
This is a sharp indictment. It puts things in 



AMERICAATWAR 171 

the worst possible ligM. It is a straight ren- 
dering of a certain resentful body of opinion. 
Here I report it in my role of annalist, and re- 
fuse to stand sponsor for it. 

Eemember, this will not affect the ultimate 
result. The bulk of America wanted to go to 
war in the biggest way at the right time. Many 
simply say, it was denied the chance. I prefer 
to believe that Wilson was high-minded in his 
policy. But America is now at war, and when 
American blood begins really to flow, the punch 
and vigour that would have marked idealistic 
America, engaged paladin-like in a chivalrous 
war, will come. Because this war will still be a 
war of chivalry, and, there is small question, 
Wilson will handle it for his part competently. 

But if the public, groundedly or ungrounded- 
ly, gets the idea that Wilson is frustrating 
Roosevelt, the President will not easily be for- 
given. The broad public is in a mood for a gal- 
lant enterprise that will signalise the true char- 
acter of the American intervention. Roosevelt, 
after a triumphant campaign in Europe, would 
1 3 elected as sure as fate. On the other hand, 
Eouncing Teddy, wanting to go, denied the 
chance, even supposedly on party grounds, may 
be elected anyway. So, for anything I can see, 
Wilson, not as President, but as guardian of 
the interests of the Democratic party is, so far 
as Roosevelt is concerned, between the devil and 



172 AMERICA AT WAR 

the deep blue sea. Of course, Wilson is so 
splendidly brainy and so quietly and sagacious- 
ly resourceful, that one does not wish to be too 
sure about it. 



XXVII 

THE BANQUET OF ALL THE TALENTS AT THE 
WALDOKF 

New York, May 12th. 
OO I think I may fairly designate the dinner 
^ tendered last Friday night in the Waldorf- 
Astoria to the two foreign Missions by the 
Municipality of New York. The floor of the 
hotel ball-room was packed to repletion by men. 
Two rows of balconies surrounding the room 
on all sides were similarly filled with women 
and men. Wlien Joseph Choate rose to speak, 
he said that "for an hour and a half he had 
realised from the happiness that had reigned in 
'the celestial regions,' how much the ladies 
liked to watch the lions feed. They were now 
to hear them roar." 

Accustomed as Canada long since has been 
to the grim side of war, I can understand that 
the question may be rising in the minds of Ca- 
nadians as to whether America is as yet simply 
taking the war out in junketing. But there 
need be little fear on this score. The United 
States stood, and to an extent still stands, in 
need of "energising," To energise a vast pro- 

173 



174 AMERICA AT WAR 

letariat is no small undertaking. The brnshing 
must be heroic. That heroic brushing is going 
forward magnificently. This indeed has been 
the grand object of the French mission in par- 
ticular. The "spectacle" aspects of the Joffre 
receptions constitute an integral and honour- 
able part of the processes necessary to provide 
the emotional background for a war-effort 
worthy of America. 

Furthermore, and beyond peradventure, side 
by side with ''spectacle" and mass appeals the 
underpinning for grim participation is being 
put in. Take an instance. Last night concur- 
rently with the Municipal banquet, a dinner was 
being given in the Waldorf by the alumni of 
the University of California. For what object? 
To signalise the departure for France of forty- 
two California undergraduates, volunteering for 
ambulance work. Friends of the university are 
equipping sixty motor ambulances. "My mother 
is giving one. I couldn't do much, but I've man- 
aged to put the tires on one," I heard a dash- 
ing looking young alumnus say in one of the 
corridors of the hotel. This man and a group 
with him were just sending a note to "Teddy," 
asking him to come and say a few words to the 
guests at the California dinner. In five min- 
utes out came Teddy, his teeth showing, and 
his capacious manner flooding the narrow pas- 
sage. "I met you at Chicago the other day," 



AMERICA AT WAR 175 

a man said who grasped Roosevelt's hand just 
as he passed me. '^Yes, by George," said the 
ex-president, as he stemmed his way forward. 
"I'm mighty glad to do anything I can for 
you. ' ' 

The seating at the head table in the ball-room 
interested me as soon as I entered. To the im- 
mediate right of Mayor Mitchel presiding, sat 
Arthur Balfour. Thereafter on his side came 
Governor "Whitman of New York, Joffre, Roose- 
velt, Spring-Rice, Admiral Chocheprat, and 
Choate. To the left of the chairman sat Vivi- 
ani, Senator Calder of New York, Taft, Jusser- 
and, and Bridges of the British army, with a 
** trailing oif " of lesser celebrities. 

Mitchel the Mayor made his fellow-citizens 
proud of their chief magistrate. His manner 
is not exactly cultured, but keen and pointed. 
He spoke with a fine air of conviction that was 
as far as possible removed from mere conven- 
tionality. If democracy is destroyed in Europe, 
it will be first menaced, and then destroyed in 
America. At last we see it. America is awake. 
We say to our friends : We are with them to 
the end. America has been protected by the 
British navy and the armies of France. Our 
money is not enough. We must make the sacri- 
fice of blood. At the close of his set speech, he 
ran over the bead-roll of the guests. At the 
name of each there was a demonstration. The 



176 AMERICA AT WAR 

five biggest were those given to Joffre, Balfour, 
Viviani, Roosevelt and General Leonard B. 
Wood. This last showed who that New York 
audience at any rate thinks is the fittest soldier 
in the United States. Bridges of the British 
army, an iron-grey, upstanding type of man, 
got a warm reception. 

Mitch el's words in introducing Joseph 
Choate, former Ambassador to Britain, were 
these: "We have chosen, to represent the en- 
tire citizenship of New York, the most re- 
spected, the most loved, the most revered of 
New Yorkers." Choate looks leonine as well 
as polished. He spoke with a sort of dean-like 
intimacy that evidently warmed the hearts of 
his auditors. ''He never fails," I heard a man 
say as the speaker sat down. Choate 's genuine 
fondness for Britain was clearly apparent. 
''Now that we have followed the lead of our 
dear allies — Great Britain, our beloved mother, 
and France, our brilliant and fascinating sister, 
there can be no such thing as failure." He 
made the most direct allusion to the embroglio 
over Roosevelt's going to the front. "When a 
man, whose name is associated with the United 
States to the uttermost parts of the earth, of- 
fered to take a division, I, in my simple boyish 
way, didn't see why he shouldn't go" [pro- 
longed demonstration]. "For the first time 
after two and a half years I am able to- lift my 



AMERICA AT WAR 177 

head as high as my eighty-five years permit." 
Introducing Balfour, Mitchel said: "No pub- 
lic servant of any country has been less self- 
seeking." There is indeed a strange, compel- 
ling charm about Arthur Balfour. And that 
charm, it is almost needless to say, he exer- 
cises effortlessly. He has a regal presence. I 
remember a great passage in Bulwer Lytton's 
"Last of the Saxon Kings," in which the 
novelist describes the return from outlawry 
of Earl Godwin and six of his seven sons. 
Five of the six are armed in complete mail, 
as they stand at the prow of the return- 
ing ship. The description rises in warmth 
with the importance of the sons; but the 
climax is reached with Harold, destined to be 
king, who, for his part, is quite unarmed. Un- 
panoplied he outshines in moral ascendancy all 
his brothers. There is something of the same 
ungirt grandeur about Arthur Balfour. An in- 
nate regality of mind is the secret of his un- 
sought potency. Britain could not by any pos- 
sibility have sent a better man to America. His 
speech last night was eminently characteristic. 
Only perhaps in the concluding sentences were 
there evidences of the cadences that come to 
this great mind when he really searches for 
them. Elsewhere there was a sort of ambling 
discursiveness, lit up ever and anon with a 
heightened or tragic phrase that breathed 



178 AMERICAATWAR 

the agony of Europe, and once or twice 
tlirown a bit out of gear by the inrush of 
an idea that he hardly knew how to ao- 
conimodate in his improvisation. It is the 
simple truth that Balfour has generated a much 
greater affection here by his lack of oratory in 
its more obvious senses, than he would have 
done by pomp and circumstance of utterance. 
He ended last night almost in the middle of a 
sentence. "My comrades and I do not feel in 
coming to America that we are coming among 
strangers. We feel that we are among broth- 
ers and friends" — I didn't dream that he had 
finished ; but the prolonged ovation that greeted 
the simple words ended his speech. 

I cannot forgo the delight of giving what I 
may call the core of his address. "I record 
my conviction that we have reached a moment 
when the issues of civilisation are trembling in 
the balance. The millions of New York have 
thronged its streets to-day and yesterday be- 
cause they instinctively feel that it is not desir- 
able, and if desirable not possible, for this great 
nation to stand aside and see the world suffer. 
We are called upon together to meet an immi- 
nent and overmastering peril. If at this mo- 
ment the world is bathed in blood and tears 
from the far highlands of Armenia to the fair 
fields of France, shall we not rise together, 
shoulder to shoulder, to resist? The union of 



AMERICA AT WAR 179 

the three western democracies will prove that 
the free nations of the earth cannot be crushed 
into the dust." 

Viviani followed Balfour and concluded the 
progrannne. This is the last time my path will 
cross that of the French Mission, so I permit 
myself to say a word about Viviani as an or- 
ator. In the first place, he is all temperament. 
His bodily action, as he speaks, is vigorous in 
the extreme. His face flushes almost crimson. 
His veins stand out like whip-cords. Ever and 
anon, occasionally three or four times in rapid 
succession, he presses both hands clenched, and 
side by side, against his forehead, over his eyes. 
It is almost as if he had gazed on horrid sights 
that persist in obtruding themselves upon him. 
His emotional expenditure is prodigious, and 
his words pour like a mill-race from his lips. 

Last night he paid a glowing tribute to the 
army of Britain, and to the cool and well-bal- 
anced Haig. One great mistake of Germany 
had been the mediocre diplomats she had ac- 
credited to foreign powers — men, many of them, 
who had thought they were hoodwinking the 
world, while they were shining in salons. This 
was a palpable allusion to Von Bemstorff, who, 
very evidently, was for long, quite a lion at 
Washington. Germany had reckoned without 
her host in many quarters — notably with re- 
spect to the British Dominions. The war has 



180 AMERICA AT WAR 

shown France to be possessed in equal measure 
of two qualities, on tlie one hand ''I'elan, I'intre- 
pidite" (dash in attack,) on the other "la pa- 
tience, le courage tranquille." The victory of 
the Mame symbolises the one ; Verdun symbol- 
ises the other. The rapid strokes with which he 
sketched Verdun were superb. He spoke with 
a sort of demonic possession as he pictured the 
wrongs of Serbia. As he poured out, lava-like, 
his detestation of the Germans, his words hissed 
and stung like scorpion tongues. "We fight not 
simply for France, not simply for England, but 
for humanit}^, but for democracy. Nous som- 
mes tons debout, les hommes libres du monde. 
We are all erect, ready to resist, — the free men 
of the world." The soul of Washington and 
of Lincoln has breathed itself into the Amer- 
ican people. This surprising and torrential or- 
ator, whose American speeches have been so 
many dithyrambs of passion, yet each varying 
from the other, closed this, probably his last 
formal utterance in the United States, with the 
words: "Lift up your heads — ^liigher — ^ever 
higher — lift them as high as your flag!'* 



XXVIII 

BEITISH PEEACHEKS IN NEW YOEK : HUGH BLACK 
AND JOWETT 

New York, May 13th. 
T AST night from 8:30 to 11:30 I Vavelled 
-^-^ through Bowery, Chinatown, Little Italy, 
the Ghetto and the rest, and saw the swarming 
warrens of the poor. To-day (Sunday) from 
12 :30 to 1 :30 I watched on Fifth avenue thou- 
sands of church-going New Yorkers. Past me 
streamed dashing, interminable files of sump- 
tuous motors, and seemingly unending currents 
of men and women, most of them groomed and 
dressed so that they looked the acme of ele- 
gance. The contrast was very striking. 

As I re-entered the hotel (last night) I said 
to the man at the newspaper stand: ''How is 
it the — (naming a paper which I leave anony- 
mous here) — to-night doesn't report the passing 
of the Eoosevelt amendment by the House at 

"Washington!" ''Well, you know, doesn't 

always get it all." "Is it rather a prim, old- 
maidish paper?" I queried. "It is a damned 
pacifist and pro-Grerman paper, that's what it 
is," came the savage answer. "Not so many of 

181 



182 AMERICAATWAR 

them nowadays, eh ? " I added. " In a magnifi- 
cent minority, thank Heaven." 

As I rode on the top of a 'bus up Fifth Ave- 
nue this afternoon, the patriotic and mihtary 
decorations appeared to fine advantage. The 
sun was refulgent, and all the flags were aflut- 
ter in the breeze. Notable among the decora- 
tions along the twenty-three squares that I 
passed were those at the public library. Across 
the front, at regular intervals, hang oblong 
streamers with white ground and yellow edges. 
In the centre of successive streamers are the 
pinion-raised eagle of America, Chantecleer, 
the crowing cock of France, and the lion ram- 
pant of old England. 

John Henry Jowett of Fifth Avenue Presby- 
terian church was to be my quarry this morn- 
ing, but arriving late I found the inner door 
locked, the stairs roped otf, and adamantine 
ushers. They told me that they usually turn 
away hundreds. Upon occasion they have 
turned away as many as two thousand. I had 
often wondered how the great preacher was 
faring in New York, and now I am happy to 
know. I shall try again at 4 :30. 

I had to walk only two squares to find Hugh 
L. Black of the Union Theological Seminary at 
Central Presbyterian church, comer of Madi- 
son avenue and 57th street. Many years ago 
now I read his ** Culture and Restraint." He 



AMERICA AT WAR 183 

is a man we ought to bring to Winnipeg some 
time. 

He was under way when I entered, and it was 
a little while before I got his text. I concluded 
at once that his subject was ''The Reality of 
the Spiritual," and before the close he repeated 
the text "What is Your Life?" He is a man 
who, in the distance and even close, looks not 
unlike R. J. Campbell. A little more sharpened 
and acute looking, and a little, not much, less 
mystic. He has the face, as many notable 
preachers have had, of an actor. His voice, 
especially in its lower register, is of great rich- 
ness. His hands have febrile, darting rather 
than twitching, movements that suggest high- 
strung organisation. Hugh Black made me 
realise this morning, as I have always realised 
when under the spell of a great preacher, that 
the high spiritual teacher is an artist just as 
much say as the musician is. There is little 
in his accent to remind one of the Scotch save 
his pronunciation of an occasional word like 
''eternity." There was at least one sentence, 
though, that had a homely Scotch air: "From 
one point of view man is a thing of the day — 
just." The "just," uttered after a tiny pause, 
was pure Scots. 

As I sat down the preacher was saying: 
"Even if there were no hereafter, he who 
would get most out of life's adventure should 



184 AMERICA AT WAR 

live the life of the spirit. When, either in the 
American army or navy, or in the British army 
or navy, when was there ever a forlorn hope 
for every place in which there were not a hun- 
dred volunteers ? A bubble on the stream, that 
bursts; a will o' the wisp, born in the marsh 
and dying in the marsh — such is in one way the 
biography of man. But he has another: The 
biography of the soul. Last Sunday night after 
preaching in this church, I took part in a 
municipal service at Montclair — the first me- 
morial service for our heroic dead. A young 
man of that place, of Scottish extraction, had 
died at Vimy Eidge. He had enlisted in a 
Highland Scotch Regiment of the Canadian 
army. He was simply anticipating the hun- 
dreds of thousands of the youth of this country 
who must go the same way. The fathers and 
mothers of America must look forward with 
such equanimity as they can summon, to these 
sacrifices. In two days my only boy goes up to 
Canada to join the Canadian army. He is only 
eighteen, but, as he says, ' ' Daddy, the age here 
is 21, but 18 is the age in England." Have I 
nurtured him, you might say, for this : to be 
cast as rubbish to the void? When I say that, 
or you say that, we are estimating life by quan- 
tity. What bigger thing can a boy do, if he 
were to live for a hundred years, than to give his 
life to the biggest cause that comes his way? 



AMERICAATWAR 185 

He is going to help to make the world safe for 
Democracy. He will stand, my flesh and blood 
will stand, beside the very Christ on Calvary. ' ' 
(Mr. Black referred to Lincoln's letter ad- 
dressed to the mother who had given five sons 
to the Northern cause, ending "May God com- 
fort you with the noble pride that you have 
been enabled to lay so costly a sacrifice on the 
altar of freedom.") Mr. Black went on: "We 
that speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake, 
the faith and morals hold, that Milton held, 
must be free or die. We must be free or die — 
that 's all there is to it. We will not live on the 
terms of tyranny. Life is not a mere dodging 
of days and dropping of sands." The preach- 
er 's close was marked by a grave, stern beauty : 
"Let us live sobered by death, let us die edu- 
cated by life. Let us pass out when we must, 
laden with the high spoils of life, for the things 
that are seen are temporal, but the things that 
are not seen are eternal." 

I made bold to speak to Professor Black, be- 
cause I wanted to tell him that he had many 
admirers in western Canada. I thought espe- 
cially of my honoured friend, the Bookman of 
the Free Press. "Ah, I am very fond of 
Canada. I am going up there^ — to Toronto — 
with my son on Tuesday." 

Regaining Fifth Avenue about 12 :30 I found 
traffic halted for the march past of a negro 



186 AMERICA AT WAR 

regiment — the ISth New York Infantry. They 
are going into camp at Peekskill, a young man 
told me. "Well, they're needed in France," I 
said. "I hope to he there myself soon," the 
boy answered. Do not even my scattered ob- 
servations prove that the great land is in a 
ferment? 

Between the last paragraph and this, I have 
heard Jowett. I should say 1,700 people filled, 
without crowding, the spacious and richly col- 
oured interior of the Fifth Avenue church. As 
the audience rose for the first time, I was sur- 
prised to notice that the front rows were well 
up toward the pulpit level. Glancing about I 
saw that the centre of the church's depth was, 
so to say, a valley. Perhaps thirty feet from 
the front the floor begins to rise in both direc- 
tions — an excellent device. 

Jowett — who, only at the close of the service 
I learned, is returning to England to take the 
place of Campbell Morgan in Westminster 
Chapel — is a rather business-like looking man, 
ruddy-coloured, white-moustached. He has a 
rapid-fire utterance that now peals out bugle- 
like and now sinks into the softness of the 
quietist. He is full of fresh unexpected turns. 
Conventional-looking he does nothing conven- 
tionally. This preacher who on the whole 
stresses the "interior" aspects of Christianity, 
reads hymns, makes announcements, and de- 



AMERICA AT WAR 187 

livers parts of hia sermons, as a man of busi- 
ness might. 

His text was, ''Add to Your Virtue (and a 
lot of other things) — Knowledge." There was, 
with one exception, no reference to the war. 
But that exception was significant. Moulton, 
the preacher said, had with his rare insight en- 
riched the ordinary reading of the passage. 
''In your faith, and so on, supply Knowledge." 
The figure Moulton had pointed out, was that 
of the orchestra. "The music of life is to be 
like that of a great band. Let your life be 
choral. Choose your instruments wisely. When 
you have got one, bring another to it." Now 
Moulton, a month or so ago, was returning 
from India. In the Mediterranean his vessel 
was torpedoed. All got safely into small boats, 
but four days exposure was too much, and 
Moulton succumbed. "His companions have 
told how they dropped his body into its wan- 
dering grave. I knew him well. He was a great 
scholar. He was a greater saint." Thus all 
roads, no matter how apparently distant in 
origin or in destination, lead to or through the 
war. I know it would be an indiscretion for 
me, under the general caption that is controlling 
me, to give more than a glimpse of a sermon 
which, with the exception of the one side-glance 
I have noted, had no reference to the war, but I 
cannot refrain from saying that hardly ever 



188 AMERICAATWAR 

have I left a church with more unwilling steps. 
The ripe wisdom of this choice master of the 
human spirit clung about the place as the light 
of the sunset clings to the Alpine peak. (Every- 
body, by the way, seems to be going to Canada. 
^'We are going through to the Rockies," he 
said. ''Perhaps I shall see you in Winnipeg.") 
From the thraldom of this seraphic doctor of 
the soul I passed once more into the clangour of 
the war-preparations. Less than a square be- 
low 55th street on Fifth Avenue again, as at 
noon, I met a regiment returning from church 
— the 12th New York Infantry, this time. A tip- 
top body of men. A little farther down I met 
a group of French marines. When I said: " Je 
salue la France," their hands shot out briskly. 
They came from the Lower Seine. The paper 
that I bought a few minutes later, bore the 
giant legend: "President will give Roosevelt 
army command is Belief." From inner pages 
of the same paper I glean items like these: (1) 
"Taft's one son accepted. Under age, so has 
to have parents' consent. A second son re- 
jected because of eyes. (2) Roosevelt has one 
son already serving in an aviation corps. He 
said the other night here that three more were 
going into camp. 'People tell me they'll have 
a rough time. I hope they do.' (3) The first 
three states to fill their army quota j^this al- 



AMERICA AT WAR 189 

ludes to the expanding of regulars and of state 
militia to war strength, and, of course, has 
nothing to do with the new drafted army] are 
Utah, Nevada and Oregon." 



XXIX 

AN ENSEMBLE VIEW OP AMEEICa's FIEST MONTH 
AND A HALE OP WAR 

Winnipeg, May 19th. 
np HE editor of the Free Press has suggested 
-■■ that, having returned to Winnipeg, and 
my series of American letters being completed, 
I should add a resumptive word on the situa- 
tion in general. At the risk of repeating, and 
at the risk of dashing something off in undue 
haste, I obey the instruction. 

In general terms I think that Canadians may 
feel assured that the state of American opinion 
could not easily be better from our point of 
view than it is to-day. To the chief among the 
Allies America is now bound by the closest ties. 
The warmth of American comradeship with 
France cannot be overstated. This might be 
analysed in detail but I forbear here. Suffice 
it to say that this feeling animates all grades 
of society. The intellectual element prizes the 
clarity, luminousness, and humanity of French 
culture. The politicians emphasize the identity 
of American and French democracy. The man 
on the street knows about Lafayette 'and that 

190 



AMERICA AT WAR 191 

is enougli to fill him witli gratitude. Inciden- 
tally, I visited the old Castle Garden building 
at the Battery, now a beautifully stocked 
aquarium, where in 1824 Henry Clay welcomed 
Lafayette. 

Britain stands out to-day before the in- 
formed American mind as the plucky, indom- 
itable, and wonderfully resourceful champion 
of the world's liberties — the one who stands in 
the breach whoever else wavers. On the Rus- 
sian situation the American government and 
people are keeping the closest eye. America is 
prepared to throw endless money into the task 
of steadying Russia in her moment of dire per- 
plexity. Reed Smoot, the Republican Mormon 
from Utah, I heard say: "If the President 
wants to advance a billion to Russia, even 
without the slightest prospect of return, I am 
ready to hold up both hands in support." 

I think I may safely say that the all but 
universal attitude in the United States is 
' ' what can we do to help ? ' ' And I pause to say 
sharply that there is no crowing going on. We 
thought loosely here that as soon as the United 
States declared war, the people would break 
out with the cry : We are the people. We are 
going to end it. When it is ended it is we 
who shall have ended it. I am able, I think, to 
say that little of the sort is occurring. Ameri- 
cans admit that they have waited too long, that 



192 AMERICA AT WAR 

too long they have left the Atlantean weight 
of the defence of freedom resting on the shoul- 
ders and on the agony of others. Thns they 
admit that they come in chastened. Of course 
they are not so naive as to fail to recognise their 
immense potentiality; but they mourn that 
that potentiality has been left so long un- 
harnessed in this gigantic struggle for the 
saving of the fundamental rights of humanity. 
And that question which I quoted above ^'"What 
can we do to help ? ' \ and which is on the lips of 
so many, is just an expression of the broad 
generic kindliness that is such a widespread 
characteristic of the American people. *'The 
States could feed herself and let the rest of the 
world starve," said my 'bus driver in New 
iYork, as we started away from the Battery, 
**but she isn't so damned mean." 

The Chicago Tribune, in a number that I 
read on my way home, reported the following. 
It may be apocryphal or it may be a fact, I do 
not know. A British army officer is sent to Ta- 
coma by his government. He gets a wire order- 
ing him to report in London, and to sail by a cer- 
tain ship. He misses his train at Cleveland, 
and applies to the New York Central in his 
dilemma. The superintendent makes up a spe- 
cial train, rushes him through, carries him one 
stretch of 186 miles in two and a half hours, 
brings him to New York fifteen minutes before 



AMERICA AT WAR 193 

his boat sails, and refuses to take a cent for tlie 
service. 

The last five weeks have witnessed a great 
advance in war sentiment and war prepared- 
ness in America. When I arrived in Washing- 
ton abont the fifteenth of April, conscription 
was being eyed with critical suspicion. Espe- 
cially the men of the older generation, ani- 
mated by memories of the Civil War, were 
against it. This opposition has faded. Wilson 
has scored here undeniably. There remains of 
course the question as to what precisely will 
happen when the Draft is applied. What will 
happen in densely populated German cities and 
sections of cities? What will the men upon 
whom the lot falls do, as they walk in streets, 
drink in German restaurants, where they hear 
little but German spoken, and, in a word, feel 
themselves segregated from English America 
by a German milieu? I can only say that I 
think the chances are they will bend their backs 
to their nationally imposed American burden. 
For one thing I am informed that the authori- 
ties have been very thorough in stripping Ger- 
mans of arms. And one thing we may be sure 
of, to the extent that German-Americans offer 
opposition, they will find the going hard. Noth- 
ing will so rapidly mature domestic American 
opinion as the appearance, even incipiently, of 
anti-national opposition. America is in no mood 



194 AMERICAATWAR 

to l^e trifled with. Her national purpose is to 
make a war effort commensurate with her re- 
sources and her status, and she won't mince 
action in dealing with so-called citizens who 
show a disposition to thwart her policy. 

Both in the United States and here there is 
some impatience with the supposed slowness 
of Congress in winding up war bills. A large 
number of bills are still a stage under consum- 
mation. I wish to say, nevertheless, that the 
two Houses of Congress are able bodies. The 
Senate is stately and impressive. The House 
is tumultuous but sincere and earnest. I speak 
here of course in general terms. And attention 
must be called to the fact that the measures 
under consideration are momentous in magni- 
tude and import. You cannot expect two popu- 
lar Chambers to vote seven billions overnight. 
You cannot expect such Houses to add a rev- 
enue of about two billions without exchanging 
a word. The censorship bill involved the most 
important considerations of public freedom. 

For the rest, even if the last touches have 
not been put to all such bills, great work is 
nevertheless being done. Minute precautions 
for taking the draft registration are already 
complete. Within two months of the declara- 
tion of a state of war the nation will know to a 
nicety its resources of man power within the 
ages of 21 to 30. The Council of National De- 



AMERICA AT WAR 195 

fence has matured an intricate and compre- 
hensive organisation. The inventive genins of 
the country is silently being concentrated on 
devices for conquering the submarine. America 
invented the submarine, and may, easily con- 
ceivably, find a way of overcoming it. A flo- 
tilla of destroyers has already arrived in Brit- 
ish waters. This means that any day German 
periscopes may be shot away by American gun- 
ners, and, almost assuredly, American blood 
will flow. And when it flows, the die will be 
cast even more definitively than it now is. 

Important instalments of the American loans 
are already in the hands of the Allies. The 
Italian Commission has quickly followed the 
British and French Missions to American soil. 
The American delegation to Eussia, the visible 
token of warm American sympathy for the 
struggling democracy of that country, has quite 
probably already left this side of the Atlantic. 
Unless a man is hard to please it is difficult to 
see what more could be expected of the Ameri- 
can government and people in the short space 
of a month and a half. Let the man who does 
not dwell in a glass house throw stones. 

And having mentioned the American Mission 
to Russia, I close with this : The second name 
on that Mission is the name of John E. Mott. 
Who is Mott? Probably the foremost religious 
worker of America. It is profoundly significant 



196 AMERICA AT WAR 

that he has been thus included. What does it 
mean? That for America, ideas, ideals, and 
the spiritual consciousness are what, at this 
moment, mean most in the eyes of America. 
America realises to-day that politics, de- 
mocracy, civilisation and religion are one. Dol- 
lars are secondary, organisation is subsidiary. 
Spirituality, Ideality, and Brotherhood are the 
watchwords of the future. Christianity has 
made its investment. The world hungrily de- 
mands first the rescue and then the full eman- 
cipation of all. These interests are imperilled, 
and into the lists America will throw its full 
force, marshalled primarily by the men, who 
are the spiritual interpreters of the best that 
America stands for. 



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